six birds

no larger than a thumb. will steal your pen if it can; cannot steal your pen.

nests only in the structural members of public libraries. vocalization said to resemble a slightly disappointed cough.

brown above, browner below. not a real bird. three people have seen it. two were lying.

migrates from one side of a single hedge to the other, every dawn, for its entire life. the hedge does not appear large enough to merit migration.

plumage the color of a fanlight at the hour the streetlamp comes on but the sky is not yet finished. believed extinct; sometimes still seen, but only by people in a hurry to be elsewhere.

iridescent in the way bismuth is iridescent, which is to say in steps, like a staircase, like a thing that decided in advance which colors it would be willing to be.