Not used independently in modern Chinese; it appears only as the second half of 鷿鷈 (grebe), now usually written 䴙䴘. It is the bird radical 鳥 (simplified 鸟) plus phonetic 虒.
register
Classical and variant form only; encountered in old natural-history texts, replaced by simpler forms in modern writing.
Components
radical
鳥niǎo
bird
The full bird radical on the left, simplified to 鸟. It supplies the meaning, marking the word as a bird, the same family as 鸥 and 鹭.
phonetic
虒sī
a horned amphibious beast; phonetic
The right side carries the sound, drifted to tī. It is itself a rare graph; the same phonetic appears in characters like 螔, here lending pronunciation only.
