GEORGINA PARFITT
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Diary
  • Understory

Bird Catcher

10/20/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
By the fire tower, above the bush with the paddle green leaves, and somewhere beyond the twin pale trunks, somewhere, in the dark brush, is a special bird. 

“Pitta,” says Hari. “Pitta.” 

He hurries to arrange his apparatus, a tripod and a strong telescope in a green cover, while he plays a recorded pitta call on his phone to try and tempt the bird forward, amplified with a bright blue speaker. When he stops the recording, he leans forward into the forest and cups his hands behind his ears. After a moment, the pitta responds with its own similar call, but faintly, as if he suspects it might be a trick. After repeating the process another three times, playing the recording, listening for the call, Hari has a good idea where the pitta bird is on the forest floor and aims the telescope. 

“Just behind horizontal branch,” he says. “Pitta.”

When I look into the telescope I see only the horizontal branch, and not the pitta. Perhaps it’s camouflaged, or it only appears for Hari. 

“I don’t see it,” I say, stepping gingerly away from the tripod. 

“Here — head coming up and down,” says Hari and steps away again. I look and this time I wait. The bird calls again, and as he calls his orange juice head crowns over the horizontal branch with such a shock of colour that I think it’s lightning. 

“Oh!” I say. The head disappears again beneath the branch. I try to peer around the rim of the telescope but the picture bends and becomes nonsense. I wait again, then the orange flash appears along with the call. This time the pitta keeps its head raised and I can see the where the bright orange crown fades to yellow, and then the sleek black mask over its black eyes. 

When I look away from the telescope I don’t believe that the pitta bird is truly in the piece of forest in the front of us. For a start I can’t see it, or the horizontal branch, without the telescope and yet both are mere metres away. But also, in the telescope the bird is so perfect, its orange so jewel-like, its eyes so black, that it seems to have been caught there, preserved in glass.

[picture is not mine!]

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    November 2018
    October 2018
    October 2016
    September 2016