ornithology

The Nurk is a bird two inches long that has the power of speech but keeps referring to itself in the third person, such as, ‘He’s a great little bird, isn’t he?

Persian mythology holds that if a Nurk appears on the windowsill in the morning a relative will either come into money or break both legs at a raffle

Zoroaster was said to have received a Nurk as a gift on his birthday, although what he really needed was some gray slacks. The Nurk also appears in Babylonian mythology, but here he is much more sarcastic and is always saying, “Ah, come off it.”

Woody Allen (when he was funny).

One of the rarest birds in Cornwall is the Knocking Horselark. It has an artificial brown beard made of sedge, freckles on its belly, a wart under each wing, a small blue hat tied beneath the chin by a coastguard's bootlace, a Welsh overcoat fastening at the back with buttons made of crystallized suet, and little yellow pointed boots. Its square eyes differentiate it from the Marsh Horselark. Every time it whistles its boots fill with sand, and its long, low, undulating flight is accompanied by a strident knocking, like the sound made by a piece of iron repeatedly banging against the roof of a tram on a windy night in August near Appleby.

Beachcomber (who was always funny).