The birds were already going when rswfire lifted the camera. Not building toward anything, not answering a call and waiting — just full volume, continuous, laid across the whole clearing like weather. He started recording into the middle of it rather than at the beginning of it, which is the only way to start recording birdsong, and the first thing he said was addressed to whoever would eventually watch: guys, just listen to these birds.
The verdict came fast. Obnoxious. He said it once, then a particular call cut through the layer and he said it again, sharper, pinned to that specific bird — especially that, that's obnoxious — and then a third time as a kind of dare to the viewer, you can't tell me that's not obnoxious. The word wasn't complaint. It was designation. He was naming them the way you name a loud neighbor you have no intention of moving away from, and he kept walking.
Somewhere in the middle of it he asked the air whether it was looking for a maid, which is the kind of thing that happens when a call in the canopy sounds enough like a phrase to be answered. He answered it. Then he made a decision — all right, I'll show you the bird — and the capture changed shape, from ambient to search. He turned toward the sound. He warned the viewer in advance that this was going to be difficult: you're going to have to look real carefully.
He found it. Held it. Well, you can see it's right there in the center — the small triumph of framing a thing the size of a fist against a wall of vegetation, offered without much ceremony, immediately followed by another round of the same address, this time direct and to the bird itself: you're a little obnoxious bird. Then the field answered back. More of them, off to the side. There's some more obnoxious ones over there. The search resolved and instantly dissolved into the larger noise it came out of.
The last stretch was movement without a target. I'm telling you, that bird — wow. A half-turn, a question thrown over his shoulder to no one and to everyone: do I have any birds following me? Then something small enough that identification wasn't going to happen from where he stood, and he named that too, as its own fact: you know what that is — it's very tiny.
Nothing closed. The recording stopped while the birds were still going, in the same condition he'd found them in, and the whole thing amounted to a few minutes of standing inside an acoustically saturated patch of Siltcoos with a camera, calling the residents obnoxious, and meaning it warmly. Attention was the entire act. There was nothing to build.