GilesConradWatson's video: Superb Lyrebird

Superb Lyrebird (Poem by Giles Watson. Picture based on a photograph by Gerard Jenkins. Birdsong recording by Marc Anderson.) Everything is diminishing, like a lyrebird shimmering off into undergrowth, until it is nothing but the dappledness of dry ferns and fallen leaves, a quivering string of Eucalyptus bark. The wet sclerophyll turned fire-prone years ago; its tinder crackles underfoot. Wood that once was mossy lies sunbleached. The undergrowth has died, and the next hillside is treeless. The lyrebirds have nothing left to imitate save chainsaws channering at the future, depriving our country of moisture. This is when it all goes up in flame: withered fronds, shredded bark, leaves like parchment, the lyrebird’s plumes, dancing into heaven, common birds turned threatened in a blinking. And all the armchair experts have a theory: it was arson, it was fuel loads, it was the Greens, or Mother Nature being cruel – anything, anything but admitting it was us who did this – that we are the knowing, remorseless killers of lyrebirds, feral as felines, stropping our claws with bank-statements, stalking feathered innocence, causing loss, killing with a fraction of the mercy of the fox.