This Friday I have a feathery object for you to have a go at identifying. I stumbled across this specimen in the Dead Zoo stores and noticed it didn’t have a species identification (and the genus name also looked dubious to me). Any ideas what species this might be?
As usual, you can put your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments box below. Cryptic clues are fun, poems are delightful but I do love a short story, so if you want to include the identification in a bit of short prose please give it a go!
Zygoma 
i wanted to cry out: Zorzal
but the hooked beak
is a fail……
off to take a peak
at others more oblique
Oh, you humans, think you know so much! Hah! You can’t even decide on a name for me. Wishy-wash, that’s what you are. Well, I am not an r. . ., not a c…., and not an s….., didn’t you notice, haven’t you seen – my nest, for instance? And that s . . . what an insult. Someone said blackish? Can’t see colors, then, can you? Poor sods. What!! You think I’m extinct! Well, I never. That’s my cousin, the one in – well, that would give you too much of hint. You guys are so dumb, you make me blue, boo-hoo. Oh-oh, I’m getting hungry again. Yep, you got that right. I’m gluttonish. I even eat the fuzzies. With my beak, I can handle ’em. Bye now. Better luck next time.
This, of course, is the legendary English bird, commonly known as the Little Brown Jobbie.
Its technical/scientific name is Miniopterus bilirubini.
Many a time and oft
have my fellow birders and I climbed to the windows, the roofs
nay the very battlements
when we did but see her appear.
She is not to be confused with the other legend, the Little Brown Bird, scientifically known as Nightingalus invisibili.
Paolo wanted a story so, in a while, when I have recovered my strength (all day spent looking for a second magpie to go with the one for sorrowful I saw first thing in the morning: all of Bombay is de-birded as a result of my quest)…
Nope. I got nothing. Even Sallie Reynold’s clues were too cryptic for me.
If I may quote my best guess (almost certainly wrong, from Eliot’s “Gerontion”, with the last word relating to the possible genus of this one…
“Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.”
25 to 26 cm
male purplish black
iris dark br.
bill and legs black?
E or C???
Are you thinking of a Cicadabird?
Yes, the cuckoo-shrikes I found were also called cicadabirds.