I’m putting out some food on my fantasy bird table 

hoping to attract my all-time favourite birds.

The first to arrive are the ones that used my first table:

robins, tits, and blackbirds that nested in the woods.

 

The flock that follows them are the best I’ve seen in Britain:

a ptarmigan, an osprey, a dotterel and a smew,

a bearded tit, a peregrine, a puffin and a bittern 

all hanging from my nut feeder - what a perfect view!

 

Those flit away, but now come birds from foreign places:

the mimicries of a lyrebird suffuse the air with sound.

I see ostriches and hummingbirds, and several toucan species,

then the fearsome harpy eagle I’ve sought but never found.

 

Next are some I’d thought were gone: great auk and dodo.

A passenger pigeon and a moa come down to feed.

Think I’m telling fibs? Look…I’ve got a photo

of an archaeopteryx attacking the sunflower seeds!

 

Now things get really weird…there’s creatures from mythology:

Quetzalcoatl with the body of a snake,

Horus, and the Phoenix, which I know from egyptology,

and Princess Leda’s swan, pecking at some cake.

 

But when I look back later there’s just a whopping pellet

composed of bones and feathers. I mutter “What a pain!”

I know full well what’s happened so I may as well tell it:

Gwaihir, Lord of the Eagles, has come to feed again.