The Ibises

I whistle when I hear birdsong.
I whistle and sing a lot by most people's standards, I suppose.
Especially guitar solos.
But I whistle in the warm fug of self-delusion that I'm somehow intimately conveying to the birds that I am one of them.
Larger, flightless, bulkier and for the most part not nearly as beautiful.
I say for the MOST part not nearly as beautiful because I find Ibises unusually ugly.
Wrinkly, unkempt and singularly unattractive. And needy to the point of fawning as anyone who has strolled through the Botanic Gardens can testify.
There's hope though - for both the Ibises and myself.
I used to find Plovers (Masked Lapwings to you pedants) ugly as fuck as well.  But I see them as an unusually pretty little avian now, and admirable in their gormless courage.
One day the imperious and singularly unattractive Ibis may do something to redeem itself.  Invent something useful, perhaps.  Learn a language that humans can understand, thus solving the age old dilemma of just how much birds really do take the piss out of us with their incessant chattering.
And so on.
I'm not holding my breath on miracles, mind you.
But life is,
after all,
about potential.
My feeling is, however, that even in death I'll be better looking than Ibises.

Fly