The bird looks me in the eye – he seems to know this is the place to look at a human being – and I look back at him. And with that smart, held connection, the story I made up for him falls away. The bird is no one’s servant. He is not dapper. Words only obscure him: the lipstick, the coral, the chiffon, the glass of port, these are all impositions on his tiny, incontrovertible bullfinch self. Even the name, ‘bullfinch’, seems a form of littering, like a sticky label fixed to his feathers.
