underparts

• “Scaly grey on its back and collar, with brilliant white underparts and pitch black legs and bill – stout and blunt for a wader.”

  The Guardian: Country diary: Holme Dunes, Norfolk

• “Held up to view in an unravelled ball of twine neatly arranged into a nest, sleeping on undisturbed, was a spectacularly attractive little creature – perhaps six inches long, its furry tail striped lengthwise and as long again, its coat silvery-grey above, creamy on the underparts; ears small and rounded; facial mask piebald and rather raccoon-like, accentuating large, luminous eyes that flickered open and met mine with no hint of alarm.”

  The Guardian: Country diary: Ariège, Pyrenees

• “Through my binoculars I could see the long wings and tail, narrow white rump and, best of all, the deep orange shade of its underparts, glowing in the October sunshine.”

  The Guardian: Birdwatch: Pallid harrier

• “Superficially like a cross between a falcon and a magpie, it landed to reveal a wispy crest, dark grey upperparts spotted with white, pale underparts, and a creamy-yellow throat.”

  The Guardian: Birdwatch: Little bustard

• “The pattern of dark arrowhead dots shows bold on its pale underparts.”

  The Guardian: Country diary: South Uist

• “The ladder-backed woodpecker can be distinguished from several congeners: the range-restricted Nuttall's woodpecker, P. nuttallii, is noticeably darker; with narrower white stripes especially below its eyes, white feathers at the base of its upper mandible, whiter underparts, and outer tail feathers with spots.”

  The Guardian: Mystery bird: Ladder-backed woodpecker, Picoides scalaris | @GrrlScientist

• “The male has red only on the back of its head. the smaller downy woodpecker is black with a distinctive white patch in the middle of its back, white underparts, no white streaks on its crown, and its black malar and eye stripes don't merge.”

  The Guardian: Mystery bird: Ladder-backed woodpecker, Picoides scalaris | @GrrlScientist

• “Whether it is a world-wide church or a single yeshiva or synagogue or ashram, a football stadium or a computer design or a company that extracts primeval carbon from the planet's underparts, elevating abundance from part of the sacred whole to the Ultimate is one of the paths to self-destruction.”

  The Huffington Post: Rabbi Arthur Waskow: Football, Rape, Cash: Idolatry

• “As with the other members of the genus, there is a dark horseshoe mark on the chest, extending down the sides towards the feet, as well as a speckling of black spots over the white underparts, the number and pattern of which are unique to each bird and are used for identification of individuals.”

  Black-footed penguin

• “Most Magellanic penguins have a white band on both sides of the head, which begins at the eye and joins at the neck, while there is a dark brown horseshoe mark on the underside, running down the flank of the body and contrasting with the otherwise white underparts.”

  Magellanic penguin

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