Richard Williamson's Nature Trails, February 23
Is this the most elegant bird in the world? The pintail drake has inspired sculptors, folk, artists,painters in oils and watercolours, photographers and writers for centuries.
Not only is the shape of this wonderland bird a symposium of contradictory structures, but the shades which you can hardly call colours, apparently add scores of other shapes by highlighting the structure. In many different ways, in short, it is a masterpiece of design.
Where will you see one? In the sewage outfall usually. Where Chichester's otuwash enters the sea at Dell Quay in Fishbourne Channel, there have been a dozen pintail for most of the winter.
For full feature read West Sussex Gazette, February 23.