Open wide please

The female chaffinch was busy singing when I took this shot.  I was quite surprised to see her tongue when looking at the image in detail.  

It's amazing to think that, allegedly, the Ancient Romans would go to the trouble of  catching hundreds of little song birds in order to prepare a dish out of their tongues.  

Given the size of them, bird tongues that is, not the Ancient Romans, I'm guessing we are talking about this being served an appetiser.  Hopefully none of you would find it at all appetising.  It would be nice to think that we've moved on a bit, although sadly there are still countries in Europe where shooting song birds is perfectly legal.

But to put all that into context, there are other parts of Europe with much bigger problems, parts of Europe that have for example just been invaded by Russia.