The beak of the present bird has strong claims to be the most formidable beak in all of Frink’s representations of the subject. Complete with carrion, the bird radiates aggression and belligerence - the head and neck of the present sculpture being compared with the "nose of a fighter plane’’ (Bryan Robertson op cit p.56). Sarah Kent in the introduction to the RA Exhibition in 1985 writes that "the first hint of real aggression comes with Bird, 1959, his head and body a taut horizontal bar ready, at a moment’s notice, to lunge and strike without mercy….’’

‘’In the emphasis on beak, claws and wings…they were really vehicles for strong feelings of panic, tension, aggression and predatoriness," Frink wrote, but cautioned "that they were not surrogates for human beings or states of being.’’