Painted in enamel on board, his pattern of five black-and-white birds holding fish and fluttering above three black cats who also are primed with fish is particularly effective.

"Thet thar is what ya calls yer little black-and-white bird with a red head," he would tell me authoritatively.

As Harrison and I stood there, a large black-and-white bird came from behind us and soared into the green.

The first and earliest work is John James Audubon's 1832 "Roseate Tern," in which a black-and-white bird seems to be both diving and pinned in space.

It was a pied crow, a black-and-white bird that people in Africa sometimes make into a pet.

In the last 25 years, populations of the giant black-and-white birds have exploded.

Mr. McDowell was fairly certain the black-and-white, football-sized birds diving for sand eels among the lobster pots and boat buoys on the pond were razorbills, which are part of the alcid family.

Flies buzzed about, laying eggs in glistening water droplets; black-and-white birds hopped from leaf to leaf, devouring shrimps that wriggled through the warm surface layers.

As he walked soaking wet through the galleries, he paused to look at Goya's "Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga" and noticed a black-and-white bird in the foreground.

They have the appearance of a black-and-white wingless bird wearing a mask.