Save the Candor

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.