A little bird comes...

High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed. 

                                                                                                 ~ Hendrik Willem van Loon in The Story of America (1921)


(The bird photographed is a Black-winged stilt)