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

Marie Antoinette’s image has been shaped by words not her own, but consistently put in her mouth through the centuries. Two things she did not say continue to be misattributed to her. One, the suggestion that the poor French peasants could have cakes if they lacked bread. And the other, oddly, has to do with ornithology. She is believed to have given Demoiselle Crane its name impressed by its uber-feminine movements, largely dance-like. Anyone in India faintly familiar with the French language having taken it up to bump up the aggregate in their higher secondary board exams, as 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 bird was given that name for its ultra-feminine demeanour but not by her. Here is why.

The infamous French queen was born in 1755, and an account of why the bird goes under the name Demoiselle Crane is found, with an illustration, in George Edwards’s A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, its various volumes written between 1743 and 1751. Even if the account about the Demoiselle Crane spilt out of the quilt-pen in 1751, it is a good four years before Marie arrived. The truth in fact runs deeper, the bird’s name and its significance preceding the book.