THAT'S A PTARMIGAN... (My new poem about a slightly obscure bird and a Peter May novel...)

 That’s A Ptarmigan…

I had never seen one, nor spoken its curious name

But certainly I had thumbed the pages countless

Times past the word ‘ptarmigan’ in my book of birds

When a child from the age of nine or ten, alone.

Couldn’t though have described it any more than ‘ungainly’…

I was looking in at Winterwatch, thus the BBC is to blame

For the moment which left me in awe and doubtless

Feeling like some kind of soothsayer, following my words:

“That’s a ptarmigan…” when a cumbersome bird was shown…

But the formal identification of it forced my eyes to enlarge insanely,

For I heard the word ‘ptarmigan’, as if I had answered correctly in a game

And I sat dumbfounded, humble and hapless,

Having simply guessed the name of this rather unusual of birds.

Astonished, I was unable to assimilate what I had just done

And sat back, wondering how the mind works and stared inanely…

However, whilst reading Peter May’s latest novel recently, 

‘A Winter Grave’, there, quite startlingly

  At the bottom of a page, as if by fate sanctioned,     

The soft white plumage of a ‘ptarmigan’ was mentioned…  

Pete Ray

12th March 2023  

All true. 

No idea how I uttered what I did when I saw the bird on Winterwatch but then to see the word used in a novel seemed far too much of a coincidence.

A Winter Grave by Peter May, pages 234 & 235: 

“…and a couple of startled ptarmigans with their pure white mass of winter plumage clattered noisily away into the forest.”

I think I need to see one.

And soon…

The author is Peter May & I am Peter Ray…

Crazy…