It looks primeval, like some strange creature emerging from a muck-filled stew.
Once, this was a sea bird. Now it has been reduced to a helpless, flightless, oil-coated being, fighting for its life - all thanks to the oil spill.
It is impossible to imagine feathers or wings, or the majestic sight of birds soaring over the crystal blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
It is just one of the sickening new images emerging from the Gulf of Mexico as the full impact of the spreading slick begins to swamp the coastline.
Horror: A sea bird is unrecognisable as it fights to free itself from oil at East Grand Terre Island beach, Louisiana
Suffering: The treacle-like sludge is hard to clean off and may birds are choking to death on it
Previously, photographs of wildlife coated in an oily sheen were as bad as it got. But now the animals are drowning in the muck, as thick and sticky as treacle, and much, much harder to clean up.
Crude oil has been pouring unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico at up to 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons) a day since an explosion April 20 that demolished a BP-contracted drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 crewmen.
It unleashed an environmental disaster of epic proportions. The spill is now the worst in U.S. history - worse than the Exxon Valdez spill - and there is no end in sight.
Victim: A dead bird lies on its back as a torrent of sludge amid the tide carries it to shore
Vast: A ship deploying an oil float shows the scale of the disaster as the spillage spreads for miles around
BP has failed in repeated attempts to stop the leak, and it has now spread from Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi to lap at the shores of Florida's white beaches.
Government forecasters said part of the far-flung oil sheen had crept within six miles of Florida's Gulf Coast and could reach the white, sandy shores in days.
Experts also fear it could hit the U.S. coast in just weeks. Underwater slicks are caught up in a Gulf current called the Loop Current, set to carry the oil around the Florida Panhandle and out into the open Atlantic.
Sign of anger: A placard beside a road in Venice, Louisiana reveals the locals fury over the disaster
Symbolic: Crosses with the names of fish and activities that have been lost fill a yard in Grand Isle, Louisiana
The moving danger: A computer-generated model of how the oil could spread into the Atlantic Ocean
The U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research projected that the oil slick would be driven by wind and currents around the Florida peninsula by early summer and up the East Coast, possibly as far as North Carolina.
The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and will last until October. The prospect of a massive storm spreading the oil, hampering efforts to cap the leak, is chilling.
Back in the Gulf, wildlife officials said 60 birds at the Queen Bess Island Pelican Rookery in Louisiana, including 41 pelicans, were found coated in oil before being caught and taken to a rehabilitation centre.
The brown pelican, Louisiana's state bird, was removed from the federal endangered species list last year.
A bird that feeds by plunge-diving for fish in the open surf, the brown pelican has been among the hardest hit birds by the spill.
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