Feeding dowitchers are like a bunch of tiny sewing machines, jabbing their needle-sharp bills into the shallow water so rapidly that their heads become a blur.
Adult females, smaller than a fruit fly, land on the backs of foraging honeybees and use their needle-sharp ovipositors to inject eggs into the bee's abdomen.
The woman whose premiership was marked by ramrod certainty and whipcrack decision-making had, it turns out, a characteristically needle-sharp idea about how her funeral must proceed.