Every tripod-
toting birder
knows it never
nests on urban
girders. Even
fences set its
scalded-crimson
head askew, its
waddle swinging,
wings akimbo.
Few have got it
on their lists and
fewer still have
caught it singing,
this endangered
North American
candor, cousin
of the done-in
dodo, big-eyed
Big Sur tremor-
tenor — only
ten or twenty
hang glide over
Modoc County,
humbly numbered
(as their days are)
for us crazy
crown- and throat- and
belly-gazers.
Any niche as
fragile as a
candor’ s renders
its extinction
certain. We can
sabotage its
habitat with
half a laugh or
quarter murmur,
fluster coveys
worth of candors
off their branches,
which, abandoned,
soon are little
more than snarking-
grounds for minor
birds, the common
snipe, the yellow-
bellied bittern.