HOMAGE

Wednesday, March 13, 2013.  Palau.  I can never look at fowl without thinking of Jakuchu's Colorful Realm.  This particular rooster was in Palau, part of Micronesia, preening in the early morning sun, before I left to dive far out in the Pacific.  He was a beauty.  His contortion turns him into a ball, with a tail, seeing where he has been but not where he is going to.

COCK OF THE WALK

February 21, 2010. A rooster. Big as all outdoors. I was walking with my friend Chris to the river when we came upon this beauty. What mind first thought to breed this bird, adding a snowy field on the back of these jet black feathers? The swirls of black, bracketing the head were a stroke of genius – forcing that red face to look forward, out over an avalanche of white plume. When I think of a flock of these, strutting down garden path, I almost shudder, the beauty must have been excruciating.