PS Cottier

Plains-wanderer
Pedionomus torquatus

Someone took a quail
and put it on a rack.
It hasn’t stopped being surprised,
and looks around comically,
this tiny survivor, this left-over,
balanced on gum-boot yellow legs.

Or perhaps it is shocked
by all the sheep, the cats, the fox,
the foul apparatus introduced
by recent arrivals, cockier
than any cockatoo?

Plains wanderer likes the quiet life;
endless stubbly land it punctuates
like a soft bracket.  Last of its kind,
all it needs is space unruffled,
except by herbs, and the female’s
russet red, blooming like a tiny sun,
as she calls to smaller moon of male.

PS Cottier

JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This year I was lucky enough to see the Plains-wanderer in the wild, which is truly a unique bird. The female is much larger than the male in this species, a bit similar to some birds of prey. But it is a truly harmless bird, and it was quite moving to see it hiding in the grass.