The Californian Least Tern

On Sundays the man in the hat ate his lunch in front of the church. He sat on the front steps, unwrapped his sandwich (corn-beef with mayonnaise) spread it out on a napkin on his lap and ate with slow methodical chews. He drank Paddy’s Bitters from a hipflask he kept on a toggle-strap, tippling the flask to his lips then pulling on the neck with his free hand (the hand that wasn’t holding the corn-beef and mayonnaise sandwich). He almost keeled a pheasant with a stick but it flew willy-nilly in the opposite direction tail-feathers corseting. He tried to upend a seagull but missed the gull’s prefrontal vault. On Sundays the man in the hat tried to keel and upend all species and sort of bird: the Laysan the Albatross, the Blue footed booby, the Vulture, the Whooping Crane, the Stork, the Puffin, the Plover, the Mutton Bird, the Osprey, the Prairie Chicken, the Loggerhead the Shrike, the Peafowl, the Macaw, the Kingfisher, the Jackdaw, the Grouse, the Cassowary, the Egret, the Hummingbird, the Killdeer, the Robin, the Trumpeter Swan, the Californian Least Tern and the common Black Tern, the Woodpecker, the Bluejay and of course the speckled mottle-feathered Quail. Those few times when he did manage to down a bird he did so with a pelted stone, pinging it off the crown of the bird’s head or scuffing it off the side of its prefrontal vault.