Description
Length 26 inches, including tail of about 18 inches. Sexes alike. Head, neck, and breast black, with a white patch on the nape ; remainder of lower plumage white, faintly tinged with lilac ; whole upper plumage purplish-blue, brighter on the wings and tail ; flight-feathers tipped with white, the outermost edged with thesame ; tail long and graduated, the feathers blue, broadly tipped with white, all except the very long central pair having a band of black in front of the white
Read more about this topic: Yellow-billed Blue Magpie
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)