Fantastic Bird and Fledglings

Description for blind and low-vision visitors

A horizontal painting almost entirely filled by one enormous bird. Its long neck rises at the left and arches over on itself in a deep hook, banded along its whole length with rows of dots in white, yellow and pale green over black, and studded at intervals with small round medallions of red and blue holding six-pointed stars. The small head at the end of the neck carries a single round eye and a heavy black beak curved like a crescent; a second crescent, in brick red, hangs below it as a wattle. The body is a great rounded mass on the right, worked entirely in beaded lines: coiling spirals in blue, violet and green across the upper half, giving way below to a maze of looping bands in red, ochre and cream, every line built from rows of white, yellow and red dots. A fan of fine hair-like plumes in green, white and pink spreads from the lower right. Two long purple legs, fringed with black barbs, reach down to grip a broad yellow and green form along the bottom edge, marked with two black claw-shaped strokes. Four much smaller birds occupy the lower left, each with a spray of black crest feathers, a spotted body in green, blue, yellow and red, and a splayed tail; one hovers in flight, the others perch. The ground behind is divided into blocks of fine hatched strokes in blue, red, yellow, green and brown, laid down like patches of woven cloth.