Oriental pratincole Oriental pratincole The oriental pratincole ("Glareola maldivarum"), also known as the grasshopper-bird or swallow-plover, is a wader in the pratincole family, Glareolidae. The genus name is a diminutive of Latin "glarea", "gravel", referring to a typical nesting habitat for pratincoles. The species name "maldivarum" refers to the type locality, the ocean near the Maldive Islands; the type specimen, caught alive at sea, survived for a month on flies. These birds have short legs, long pointed wings and long forked tails. They have short bills, which is an adaptation to aerial feeding. The back and head are brown, and the wings
A Gentle Creature (film) A Gentle Creature (film) A Gentle Creature is a 2017 drama film directed by Sergei Loznitsa. The film was created as an international co-production between France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. The film is inspired by the short story of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A woman lives alone on the outskirts of a village in Russia. One day she receives a parcel she had sent to her incarcerated husband, marked 'return to sender'. Shocked and