When It Comes to Camouflage

by SAMANTHA DEFLITCH

Woodcocks are deftly designed birds: mottled plumage 
set to mimic leaf litter dried oak and birch, and sedge grass
that makes an edge of cemeteries, clearcuts, powerline right-
of-ways. Their straight, prehensile bill, filled with sensitive 
receptors, is an ideal tool for nightcrawler harvest, good
fuel for migrating birds. Incidentally, migration through
great cities turns the woodcock’s anatomy against them.
Their wide-set eyes cannot perceive a flight path, 
tower window strike making dead birds or concussed 
birds with no sense of flyway. When I found one huddled 
beneath tall evening, I saw myself alone in the night—
a spasm spine, tissue invisible to passerby and specialists 
in their rush, an organ turned against itself. Perception 
is a function of curiosity: how do these birds make it, 
impossible written across their genes? I picked her up,
then understood what it meant to survive my own body.