the clouds in his eyes
Apparently the chestnut color in the tail feathers means this is a great-crested flycatcher and not an eastern wood-pewee as I’d initially assumed. A flycatcher regardless. [Edit] A crack birder is telling me it looks like a catbird to him. I didn’t even think of that! IDing dead birds turns out to be surprisingly difficult, without all the little mannerisms and noises to go off of.
I’m a big believer in “first thought, worst thought,” so I want to share my first attempt here because of how terrible it was:
killed by a fence the migrant flycatcher’s empty claws
So obvious, yet needlessly confusing (Killed how? Do small birds really have claws?). The need for an at least slightly more oblique relationship between image and text is ultimately what led me past my overly clever first impulses.
Deer fences do kill unwary birds who collide with them from time to time — a tragic consequence of trying to save the forest from a super-abundant herbivore in the absence of natural predation.
Woodrat photohaiku 