Birdwatching 2

Today’s bird-just-outside-the-window is the kereru, or native wood pigeon. Great big plump thing, too.

I remember encountering a silhouetted kereru in the near-pitch darkness of Central Park when walking up the hill to Brooklyn, and using its presence as an excuse to say something to the mysterious footsteps keeping pace behind me. The footsteps turned out to belong to a scared young woman new to the city who didn’t know that the Central Park shortcut ran out of lighting a third of the way along, and was keeping pace with me because I seemed to know where I was going. We had a nice friendly conversation until the top of the hill, where she went along one path and me along another. I never saw her face; it was completely dark the whole time. The pigeon, for its part, seemed quite happy to sit on a branch arms-length from me even when I stopped to point it out.
Listening right now to the sounds of Aquaboogie, soon to listen to Group Five, both CDs acquired during my fleeting appearance at their joint CD release gig last night. Which looked like it was going to be a lovely night. And I’m sure that it was.