That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for June 10, 2024

/// The chief falconer to England’s King,

Robert Cheseman trained birds to take wing.

In King Henry the Eighth,

Robert had perfect faith.

(If he hadn’t the axes might swing!)

Cheeseman; indignant that the chef suggested poultry for dinner in front of Squacky.

When Ethan gave someone “the bird”…he did it with real style !

Don’t you know about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is the word!

Shy Robert Cheseman had come to depend on Perry, his Wingman.

But who is speaking?

“No I haven’t seen your cat. By the way it peed in my slippers yesterday.”

“Don’t listen to them. I think you look great in that hood.”

Yes, I suppose that is another way to give someone the bird

The Maltese Falcon before the lead covering.

When Chesebro whips off the hood/

It is pretty well understood/

By both birds and by “birders”/

there’ll be avian murders/

taking place in the neighborhood.

some fowl humor here today

Though his looks undeniably bland, He thought of himself as grand, For when shove came to push, No need for two in the bush, He always kept a bird in the hand.

Perry Greene Falcón wasn’t called “The Birdman of Stratford on Avon” for nothin’!

“Don’t touch my birdie!”

The only reason he got the falcon was that it went so well with his outfit.

Cheseman was the greatest falconer around. He could teach the birds to hunt blindfolded.

Yes, it’s true, the phrase “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush” did originate with he, but he has to admit, after all these long years, he’d trade it all in just to see a bush again.

Portrait of Robert Cheseman (1485-1547): 

Paste (including the quote marks) 

"Category:Falcons in art" Wikimedia 

(syntax supported by the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Brave, and Yandex search engines) in the browser address bar (or search for it using one of those search engines) and choose the first Category: found and once there find the text string Holbein, and click its link for info and links that point to more info about this roughly jumbo envelope size painting, including a link to the museum’s Description. Clicking the image at the Summary’s upper right will show the restored (perhaps why the coloration is different) painting with a much larger image. 

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (Ctrl- or right-) clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s MASTERPIECE #3335 (June 9, 2024) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment, and using the dropdown menu (even larger, if you trim what’s after .png from the URL). I have added a comment there pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. So far, 6 works by him have been used here, the August 8, 2013, strip being the prior. GoComics has deactivated the hyperlinks and removed the new lines in my comment there; but, perhaps the text remains informative.

I am so glad he decided to use my hand as his perch.

A falcon, especially one that big, is most likely to be a female. I wouldn’t use “he” as in the comments above. (Males are known as “tiercels,” less common for hunting, certainly by, you know, kings, for instance.)

It’s a postage stamp!