Crests

The chicks hatched in April have also become 5 months old. Their bodies are about the same size as their parents, about the only difference is that the roosters have smaller crests than their father.

Their breasts erect they rear amid the deep, / their blood-red crests above the surface shine, / their hinder parts along the waters sweep, / trailed in huge coils and many a tortuous twine.

Then, as with arms he comes to aid, they bind / in giant grasp the father. Twice, behold, / around his waist the horrid volumes wind, / twice round his neck their scaly backs are rolled, / high over all their heads and glittering crests unfold.

The ship dived like a swan through the waves and rose again and again on their towering crests.

Pterosaurs are usually depicted in films like King Kong and Jurassic Park as having enormous bony crests on the tops of their skulls.

And then the happenings of some wild and remote place will be heard by electronic ears and recorded and catalogued in a digital language of waves. Crests and troughs carrying the muted hoots of owls, the lonesome calls of wolves, the wind raking through spruce boughs, or a kind of purity and peacefulness beyond description, glabrous as glare ice and just as condensed.