beak

By then, however, the golden beak had long vanished and its original, three-dimensional shape had folded into its current fan-like form.

Meanwhile the narrator’s financially devious husband appears as a vulture with “the brooding eye, the blood-tipped beak, the flabby folds of flesh” of a bird of prey.

Many of the beasts have comical attributes: feathered elbows, parrot beaks or sail-like membranes on their heads.

“Suddenly with a plop, the egg landed on the straw. With clucks of pleasure the hen shook her feathers, nudged the egg with her beak, and left,” Goodall wrote almost 60 years later.

But before you put on your 17th century “air-purifying” beaked mask, let’s find out from the experts why this disease is still around and how dangerous it is now.