Tawny Frogmouth

I call it Tony. It's my most favorite local bird. The name is puzzling maybe, but if you ever put your hand inside the mouth of a tawny frogmouth, you'd discover, just like I did, that it is indeed like the mouth of a frog. This bird surprised me, or I should say stunned me, twice. First time I saw one was in a zoo and I read the sign "Tawny Frogmouth", I stared at the wooden log lying on the bottom of the enclosure, but I didn't see anything. I passed, thinking that the bird had been moved. Behind me, Chloe started giggling and pointed out at a part of the wooden log, similar to a branch sticking up. It was Tony! With it's eyes shut, head sunken into the narrow shoulders and beak buried into the mass of grey feathers, the tawny frogmouth pretended to be part of the log and I got tricked. Small animals that constitute its prey get tricked, too. The camouflage was so perfect, I could have sat on the bird and not known it was there. Second surprise, the "frog mouth". We went to a small private zoo, Moonlit Sanctuary, for a night walk, when all nocturnal animals come to life. Wallabies jumped to our feet to be fed and quolls and sugargliders were smoothly sliding among branches just in front of our eyes. When we approached the enclosure with "the tawnies," we were asked if anyone wanted to stick their hand inside a tawny's mouth to see why it's called that way, frogmouth. Well, I did and I discovered that it was a compact green membrane, dry and stretched, which helped the bird swallow live prey without chewing it. I didn't get pinched, so the bird liked me. I fell in love with it and it's a game of hide-and-seek, whenever we go for walks in the neighboring parks at dusk, I squint my eyes to spot them perched on branches, pretending to be trees...