This conveys the distant wink and sparkle of sun glancing off a choppy sea surface and appearing, at a distance, like a lather of birds.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘First sunlight off the sea like thousands of white birds.’

Source: Christopher Logue, War Music: An account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 146