As if dressed in its finest clothes, this Eurasian spoonbill steps through the marsh and scans the water with its bill — but it doesn’t soil its feathers.

In fact these are its finest clothes.  It’s in breeding plumage.

How elegant.

.

(photo by Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.net, via Wikimedia Commons where it was picture of the day on 31 Dec 2011.  Click on the photo to see the original.)