Great Bear Wilderness i walk this empty street

Oogh, have a sleepy post. *goes to bed*

He would never have noticed the blackbird had it not spoken to him. Peregrine froze, his eyes shifting from left to right. He saw no one. Who the hell had just said his name? Well, his name wasn't Wolf but... it occurred to him that a fellow canine probably wouldn't address him this way. Slowly, his eyes raised and he found himself looking back into a pair of beady black eyes set in a dark, beaky face.

"Did—did you just say something to me...?" the swarthy canine asked incredulously. Could birds speak the common tongue of wolves? He vaguely recollected talking to an owl once, when Junior et al were still very small. Yet he couldn't remember ever communicating with one otherwise. That wasn't to say he didn't respect the resident avians. As a matter of fact, March Owl had instilled in all her children a fascination with birds, except for the few that were seen as food (ducks, geese and turkeys came to mind).

He gaped up at the crow or raven or whatever it was, then his dusky jade eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. "You aren't a magpie, are you?" he asked. Peregrine was pretty sure it (he?) wasn't but he couldn't see the bird's backside to check for those distinctive white markings.