pied • \ˈpīd\ • adjective
: having sections or patches colored differently and usually brightly
The word pied has appeared in 84 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Jan. 6 in the Op-Ed essay “Bird-Watching, Patriotism and the Oregon Standoff” by Peter Cashwell:
This is the purpose of a national wildlife refuge: to use our collective wealth and will to protect something important to all of us. The Blackwater refuge in Maryland has treated me to the stirring sight of hundreds of wintering tundra swans, while in New Mexico, I glimpsed the comical crests of my first-ever scaled quail at the Bitter Lake refuge. At Nebraska’s Crescent Lake, I’ve seen the tiny tiger-striped chicks of the pied-billed grebe floating close to their mother, while overhead graceful black terns balanced in the wind, a thousand miles from the sea.
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