Two youngsters from Chennai witness a rare dance of migration by a ‘French ballerina’ at Nemmeli Salt Pans

Marie Antoinette’s representation has been shaped by words not her own, but consistently enactment successful her rima done the centuries. Two things she did not accidental proceed to beryllium misattributed to her. One, the proposition that the mediocre French peasants could person cakes if they lacked bread. And the other, oddly, has to bash with ornithology. She is believed to person fixed Demoiselle Crane its sanction impressed by its uber-feminine movements, mostly dance-like. Anyone successful India faintly acquainted with the French connection having taken it up to bump up the aggregate successful their higher secondary committee exams, arsenic this writer did decades ago, would realise Demoiselle is from French and a variant of Mademoiselle, denoting a young lady. Back to Marie and her putative bird-christening abilities, this vertebrate was fixed that sanction for its ultra-feminine demeanour but not by her. Here is why.

The infamous French queen was calved successful 1755, and an relationship of wherefore the vertebrate goes nether the sanction Demoiselle Crane is found, with an illustration, successful George Edwards’s A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, its assorted volumes written betwixt 1743 and 1751. Even if the relationship astir the Demoiselle Crane spilt retired of the quilt-pen successful 1751, it is simply a bully 4 years earlier Marie arrived. The information successful information runs deeper, the bird’s sanction and its value preceding the book.