The Goal of the Wise

Folio number XI is written in the top center. Institutional stamp from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
The manuscript shows significant water damage and fading, particularly along the left margin and the upper central portion of the page.

The folio is richly illuminated with naturalistic depictions of birds. In the left margin, five birds are arranged vertically: a white goose, a white swan, a grey heron, a black aquatic bird (likely a rail or coot), and a mallard duck. To the right of the second column of text, three white storks or herons are depicted in a marshy setting; the top one is swallowing a fish. At the bottom of the page, a row of five dark-plumaged birds (possibly cormorants) are shown standing on grassy mounds amidst a landscape with flowers and water.

these impressions, made while swimming with their entire legs, are restricted more frequently and more easily toward themselves. Therefore, these kinds of birds were given by nature short shins to swim better. And because they run on land, it is contrary to their gait, as is evidently apparent in geese. It follows, therefore, that all these birds are reasonably of poor gait.

Indeed, aquatic birds that swim and fly well, and do not move away from the waters, such as species of swans and pellicani pelicans, which some in Italian call cofanos baskets/large-beaked birds, and mergos divers/mergansers and species of coruozū marinoꝝ cormorants and things similar to them. Others do not swim nor fly well, nor do they move away from the waters, such as certain manners of rails and those similar to them.

Others do not swim and fly well, nor do they distance themselves from the waters, such as species of herons and things similar to them.

Again, among aquatic swimming birds, some submerge themselves entirely in the waters for the acquisition of food, while others submerge [only] the head and neck up to the shoulder or up to the middle of the body.

The diversity, however, of the things that aquatic [birds] use is as follows. For some aquatic [birds] live only from aquatic things. Others [live] from field things only. Others from both. Those that live only from aquatic things are pelicans, species of cormorants, and species of divers.

Those that live only from fish, and indeed of those that live from field [produce] and if there are other modes for them near the waters, they find them, and from herbs, grasses, and fruits that they eat nearby, they soften them in the water because of the tenderness of the things. Others [live] from near and far from the waters where they can find better [food], of the species of geese that live from herbs, grasses, and crops, and things of this kind.

Others, indeed, live from both, [those] that sometimes [live] from fish and aquatic and terrestrial prey, such as this type of heron, which live from fish, frogs, serpents, mice, and things of this kind. Others [live] from fish, herbs, fruits, and grasses, as are ducks.

From the aforesaid, it is clear that some of the swimming aquatic birds eat fish, such as are the modes of divers, pelicans, cormorants, and the like; some swim and do not eat fish, such as the manners of swans. Some do not swim and eat fish, such as the modes of herons and those similar to them. Some do not swim, nor do they eat fish, such as are many modes of magpies or perhaps a specific type of aquatic plover that are aquatic: [they] neither swim nor eat fish.

Concerning the exit of aquatic birds from the waters for feeding.