Another Bird Drawn by My Wife

Long-Toed Stint
Sun-Ae Hwang

According to Wikipedia - which one should never cite in a scholarly paper - this bird has mucked about in muddy places for ages, sticking its beak into rotting gunk, in which it hopes to spear molluscs, crustaceans, amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates (i.e., various cowardly vermin). It gobbles these creatures, unwashed and coated with rotting muck, down its voracious throat. It also crams seeds - probably even damp moldy ones - into its maw. It roosts not in tree nests high above the filthy ground, but down in really soggy spots or in low grass and other low-growing stuff that litter its feeding grounds. In its breeding antics, this bird blithely ranges across Russia's tundra, taiga, and open grassy bogs or swamps, unconcerned at the putrescence, in which it also nests.

So much for the Long-Toed Stint . . .