RUFFLED FEATHERS

by Iain Grahame ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28, 1978

More larkish fowl play from the author of Flying Feathers (1977). Daws Hail continues its captive breeding efforts, its spunky wingless cast intact: Grahame himself, wife Didy, and two children; forbearing Tony and Jean, the small-chores couple; Tim the almost-resident painter (and book illustrator); and Cees the general caretaker, a cherubic Viking who excavates ponds with spade and shovel and fells trees with a handsaw. There was the amorous shelduck who threw over her mate and threw herself at Grahame, a wife-battering pheasant named Jaws, assorted escape artists, hormone injections that backfired and artificial insemination techniques that required ingenuity and lightning reflexes. Callers ring up--""an albatross just landed in my herbaceous border""--and the beekeeper suffers stings beneath her dress with ""four muffled squeaks. . . followed by what sounded remarkably like a long, drawn out, ecstatic moan of pleasure."" Grahame painlessly slips avicultural data into his clutch of anecdotes and appends do-it-yourself particulars. Sunny and mild.

Pub Date: Aug. 28, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1978

Categories: NONFICTION