IT’S the beak, of course. There’s no other beak like it. The bright colours, the wedgy proportions and the bold profile command the eye. Yet, behind this head-turning display lies a unique working tool. Beaks usually open like the blades of scissors or shears. Not so the puffin’s: it is hinged to allow the top and bottom to operate in parallel and accommodate a neat rack of fishy fare. Its edges have inward serrations for a firm grip on the slippery catch and a rough-ended tongue, plus spines on the upper palate, complete a design that permits the adult bird to return from miles out to sea to feed its land-bound young without spillage. The largest rack recorded in this country is 61 sand eels and a rockling. One of the folk nicknames for the puffin is ‘clown of the sea’, but humour was ever a serious business.
Why the funny name? One easy explanation suggests that the bird’s young are plump and puffed up, but the logical supposition is that it derives from the Middle-English pophyn, the word for the fatty salted carcases of the young of the Manx shearwater, an unrelated species, but one readily available to centuries of coastal foragers to whose diet the little birds provided a welcome seasonal addition. Puffin fledglings were also snatched and stored; local practice did not apparently differentiate between the two species, so the puffin acquired the same identity as the Manx shearwater.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 05, 2023 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 05, 2023 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
A trip down memory lane
IN contemplating the imminent approach of a rather large and unwanted birthday, I keep reminding myself of the time when birthdays were exciting: those landmark moments of becoming a teenager or an adult, of being allowed to drive, to vote or to buy a drink in a pub.
The lord of masterly rock
Charles Dance, fresh from donning Michelangelo’s smock for the BBC, discusses the role, the value of mentoring and why the Sistine chapel is like playing King Lear
The good, the bad and the ugly
With a passion for arguing and a sharp tongue to match his extraordinary genius, Michelangelo was both the enfant prodige and the enfant 'terribile’ of the Renaissance, as Michael Hall reveals
Ha-ha, tricked you!
Giving the impression of an endless vista, with 18th-century-style grandeur and the ability to keep pesky livestock off the roses, a ha-ha is a hugely desirable feature in any landscape. Just don't fall off
Seafood, spinach and asparagus puff-pastry cloud
Cut one sheet of pastry into a 25cm–30cm (10in–12in) circle. Place it on a parchment- lined baking tray and prick all over with a fork. Cut the remaining sheets of pastry to the same size, then cut inner circles so you are left with rings of about 5cm (2½in) width and three circles.
Small, but mighty
To avoid the mass-market cruise-ship circuit means downsizing and going remote—which is exactly what these new small ships and off-the-beaten track itineraries have in common.
Sharp practice
Pruning roses in winter has become the norm, but why do we do it–and should we? Charles Quest-Ritson explains the reasoning underpinning this horticultural habit
Flour power
LONDON LIFE contributors and friends of the magazine reveal where to find the capital's best baked goods
Still rollin' along
John Niven cruises in the wake of Mark Twain up the great Mississippi river of the American South
The legacy Charles Cruft and Crufts
ACKNOWLEDGED as the ‘prince of showmen’ by the late-19th-century world of dog fanciers and, later, as ‘the Napoleon of dog shows’, Charles Cruft (1852–1938) had a phenomenal capacity for hard graft and, importantly, a mind for marketing—he understood consumer behaviour and he knew how to weaponise ‘the hype’.
