counting coots

The thing that stayed with me the most was that the Dodo was fucking huge! Huge! No shit - it's no wonder this bird went in the pot - it was made for it. All these years, I havent actually thought about the size of it - so often it appears in books and is usually described as being related to a pigeon but being larger - but I had no idea that it was over 3 foot tall! The beak on it was enormous - if this bird actually had any aggressive tendencies, it would have ripped sailors' arses off with one peck if they came close. But it didn't. So the rest is history. Literally.

The rest of the bird room was on the one hand fascinating, and utter, utter shite. The amount of birds on display was great, and some of the more outlandish species was interesting, but many of the stuffed birds are a long way from realistic plumage, and some of them are just plain manky.

If you happen to go one day, and the Darwin exhibition is sold out (as it was on Saturday), I assume that you will take a bee(eater?)line for the bird room. If you do, check out the Spoonbill. It has turned into a horrible bug eyed freak that resembles only vaguely the gorgeous bird that you see in the field. If I happened to see such a freako-monster in the field, I'd feel guilty at looking at it. Just one example of many.

However, in the same case as the mangy spoonbill, there was a Hoopoe and I showed it to Mrs Thing and gave a little advance notice, that should an easy one hang around this year, we would be off to see it in a trice and it was greeted with a suprised "We get them? Here?". Cracking, so we left the room and headed off to see the blue whale while I did my fantastic, and stunningly realistic Hoopoe impression...