– Manfred
Manfred sat on the powerline, watching the guano games with one half of his brain as his raucous friends dived at a freshly washed car, vents opened wide, and scored their results; while the other half of his brain overflowed with thoughts of Amelia.
He didn’t think anybird even noticed when he left.
Heading towards the western markets, Amelia now filled most of his brain as he joined one of the steady streams of birds in holding patterns. He chose the southern queue and forced a queue-joining smile on his beak and flew the pattern.
It was slow going. Passing the southern entrance for the nth time, he switched to the western queue, keeping a side-eye on his original place in the old queue. Eagle-sparrow-finch-finch-finch-mudlark. He looked ahead in his new queue. Crow-crow-wattlebird-cormorant-flock of fairy wrens.
On the next revolution, he compared finch-finch-mudlark of the old queue to the crow-crow-wattlebird-cormorant-flock of fairy wrens of his new queue. He switched back, only to see the western queue surge forward, every one of his marker birds flying inside.
His queue-smile slipped. A frown creased his brow. Forcing his beak into a wider grin he switched queues again, only to enjoy a stop placed on all western landings. He and a thousand other birds fought their way over to the southern queue. The finch-finch-and-mudlark were all inside now. He held his place for another n laps and cast a side-eye on the sun.
A pair of sparrows behind him played eye-spy as the landing zone finally grew closer.
“Is it Sahara?”
“Nope.”
“Is it…sea?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, oh! It’s a snake, isn’t it?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, for hawk’s sake,” Manfred lost his cool. “It’s sky!”
“Clear!” called the plover controller in the landing zone, possibly saving the life of an innocent sparrow. Manfred spread his wings, lowered his legs for maximum drag, and landed in the centre of a regular, convex heptagon, marked in powerful runes of used straws and plastic bottle tops.
“Touchdown!” yelled the plover, and pointed both wings towards the exit. “Expedite! Expedite!”
Manfred left the zone in an orderly fashion and heard the next call for “Clear!” before turning to look at his destination.
Le marché Avian.
His ears were assaulted by the tweets, squawks and mongering of the market proper and he forgot all about queue stress.
“Get your feathers! Original colours! Feathers here!”
“Worms for sale! Fresh and juicy! Worms for sale!”
“Grains! Nuts! Every type of seed!”
“Colours! Powders! Scents!”
“Nectar!”
“Math tuition!”
“Order your new nest here! Straw, mud, feather-lined, multi-storey. Get your order in before it’s too late!”
“Mites!”
Manfred started an aimless wandering, drawn from one stall to the next. Water-smoothed glass here, shiny metal ring tops there.
No, he decided. Not another ring or she’ll be taking jewellery for granted for the rest of our lives.
He caught a glimpse of shiny glass, and back-tracked, making a bug-line to the stall. He was surprised to see it wasn’t glass but plastic. Shiny and new. A Nankeen Kestrel came out from behind the cobwebs to greet him.
“Is sir after quality plastics?”
“Do you have any more of these?” Manfred asked.
Her eyes sparkled. “Of course! It’s all the rage, isn’t it?” she exclaimed, holding the cobwebs wide. “I have nothing but the finest, shiniest, newest, straight-from-the-package, unmarked goods here.”
She led him deeper into her exclusive shop, the noise of the outside dropping to a pleasant murmur. Delicate scents wafted from every corner and Manfred inhaled more than one of his favourites. Freshly crushed snails, curdled cream, newly shelled beetles, wheely-bin juice. The lighting, low and warm like a summer’s dawn, caught the gentle shimmer of faultless plastics everywhere. He tried not to stare. A completely new and unmarked plastic beer cup. A collection of shiny and unscratched lego pieces in bright primary colours. An arrangement of a dozen snowy-white ping pong balls. A collection of shiny jet-black A4 comb binders.
He checked to make sure his beak was firmly closed more than once.
“We can get any kind of plastic you want,” she continued. “Not just these exquisite pieces of art, but practical, too, if sir wishes it.”
“You are doing an amazing job of interception, I must say. How do you find things so early in the waste chain?”
The kestrel tapped her beak. “I can’t give away all my secrets, now, can I?”
“No, no I…we all have our secrets.”
“So. Is it a present for a henling you’re after?”
“Yes. I’m after something simple, but elegant. Second date.”
She nodded to herself. “I have something just in. Only one pair.” She indicated a corner cabinet. “How about this matching pair of water cups?”
The display was simple and sparse. And undoubtedly expensive. He pointed. “This blue pair? Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
“The lids from an ape artist’s paint tubes. Very difficult to get at all, let alone completely undamaged. And most of them are white, you know. These coloured ones are extremely rare. Sir has chosen well.”
“I can pay with diemeniana wings if you deem them acceptable?” Manfred winged over a casual footful of wealth, the vivid red wing stripes of the alpine cicada glowing like rubies in the soft lighting. “And take a little extra for gift wrapping and delivery.” He didn’t want to take any chances with accidental scratching.
“I think sir will find the water sweeter when drinking out of such tasteful pieces,” the kestrel offered her wing. Manfred shook it. “Now, sir’s name?”
“Magenta,” Manfred replied. “Manfred Magenta.”
“Oooh, Magenta?” she squealed and looked him up and down. “Sir should have said. Your mother is a very good customer. Very good indeed.” She gave him back the diemeniana wings.
He was still glowing with satisfaction when he walked past Moss’s Providores, Discretion Guaranteed. The cobweb on the entrance was open. He raised a wing to the grey feathers sprouting on his crown. He was, after all, nearly six months old. Maybe it was time to invest in a stock of his own powders instead of relying on Fridays.
Before he gave it another thought, Manfred stepped inside, closing the webs behind him. Too late, he realized he’d have to confess his particular problem to whatever hen ran the store, this ‘Moss’, whoever she was. His beak opened in terror. He spied her there, in the back corner, the light too dim to make out her features let alone species. She had her head down, busy shredding flower petals with her beak. Manfred turned on his claws, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
“Feel free to browse,” the bird spoke. It was a warm voice. It was a welcoming voice. But most importantly, it was a cockly voice. Manfred breathed a sigh of relief and turned back.
“I, errrr,” it still wasn’t an easy topic to broach with strangers. “I’m after some powder,” Manfred said. As he walked closer, he saw the long beak, the pale breast, the speckled brown feathers. A common greenshank then.
“I can see it’s not for yourself, sir,” the greenshank replied as discreetly as the sign suggested, “as your crown is gleamingly black.”
Manfred relaxed. “That’s right,” he said. “Not for me, not for me at all.”
“My name’s Nester Moss,” the greenshank said. “Now I must ask sir,” he leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper and stopped shredding. “Exactly which black would you like? You see, there’s degrees of black. There’s magpie black, with its subtle undertones of brown; crow black, with that glossy blue sheen; currawong black, with no sheen at all; and of course, as sir would know, there’s mudlark black which has no sheen but still manages to convey a hint of blue.”
Manfred couldn’t think how to ask for the right black without confessing, and he wasn’t sure how to do that after his lie.
“Ahhh.” Nester Moss, living up to his store’s by-line again, saved him from his dilemma. “I can see it’s for your hen, and sir is saving her the embarrassment of asking for herself. Perhaps if I matched it to sir’s own colours, we would arrive at something suitable?”
Manfred breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, yes. Thank you,” he managed. He allowed Nester Moss to inspect his feathers closely, turning and spreading his feathers when told.
“I have exactly what your young hen needs, sir,” Nester Moss announced. “I’ll just go in the back and mix it up for you, if you’d care to wait? I shan’t be too long at all.”
Manfred looked around at the impressive range while he waited. Some of Nester Moss’s colours just didn’t seem possible. He peered closer at a plastic tub filled with a particularly intense yellow, admiring the smallness of the particles, their subtle sparkle. He reached a flight feather towards it.
“Touch at your own peril,” Nester Moss returned. “That’s saffron yellow. Lasts longer than the feather itself. I bring it back from the crocus flowers of China myself. Some of my best customers absolutely adore it. It goes so well on whites and the paler greys of old age.”
“Now,” he straightened again and winged over a small package wrapped in nondescript lolly wrappers. “You mustn’t get it wet while you’re out and about, or it will run over your white parts. It washes out easily mind, so you’ll need to keep going to Fridays. But this is particularly useful for those evening touch-ups.”
Manfred didn’t even notice Nester Moss was no longer referring to his hen. He paid the greenshank with a bronze carapace.
“If sir doesn’t mind waiting, I’ll fetch your change,” Nester Moss turned to deposit the valuable token in the back of the nest.
“No,” Manfred replied. “No change necessary. I thank you for your kind service.”
“Sir is too generous,” Nester Moss replied, bowing as he assisted Manfred to the cobweb.
Evolution: it's for the birds 