The bird that lives in my house is truly beautiful, with lemon yellow feathers and a kiss of orange on her cheek. Beautiful, but angry. Beautiful, but spiteful. Territorial. If I come within three feet of her cage, she puffs up, opens her beak and hisses at me. If I wag my finger hello at her, I risk getting bitten. We are not friends, but rivals. We love the same man.

Sunshine is a Lutino Cockatiel, and it’s entirely my fault that she lives in my house. See, there had been these two sweet parakeets, Happy and Lucky, who belonged to my husband. They made the most delightful sounds and we all loved them. One day, I opened the front door absentmindedly and...

watched them head out together for the tall

pines on the ridge behind our neighbors' house,

watched them, slack- jawed, until they were just a

smidge of green and blue against the morning sky.

Goodbye.

My husband was bereft. I felt sad, remorseful, and terribly, terribly guilty. It was my guilt that led me to suggest, once he was ready, that we level up. My husband had fallen in love early in our marriage with an African Gray parrot at our local pet store. We used to go visit it and stare into its startling sentience. “No way,” I had said. “They live too long.” Did I understand that cockatiels are really just small parrots and also live too long? No, I did not. And now for the next thirty (?!?) years, we will have a beautiful, winged creature in our house who only loves one of us, and she loves him fiercely, screaming when he’s been gone from her adoring gaze for too long. She does not sing or dance or mimic human language. She does not play peek-a-boo behind a soda can like that one social media star. She stole the “delete” key off his laptop. We have no idea where she put it. She’s not what you might expect from a pet bird.

Unexpected birds are the theme of this 16th digital issue of The Fourth River, and there’s a story behind that, too. As a journal that publishes nature writing, we tend to get a lot of submissions about animals, and in the thirteen years I’ve been editor, the animal that features the most heavily are the ones with wings. I get it! My grouchy housemate notwithstanding, there is something inspiring, awe-inducing, maybe a little intimidating or even terrifying about birds. But you know, we get a lot of birds. Every year I would observe this with my students, and we would agree: if we’re going to publish birds, they had better not be the same bird every time. They had better be doing something exceptional or unexpected. And every year, as we discussed possible themes for upcoming issues, I would joke that maybe we should just go all in on the birds already.

So, reader, that is just what we have done! Issue 16 celebrates our 20th year of publication by celebrating the fascinating feathered animal that soars exuberantly through our Submittable queue. Birds! There goes another one!

Many thanks to the people who have brought this issue to life. Our student and volunteer editors from last spring and this fall have done the hard but edifying work of reading every piece that nested in our rafters. Our genre editors, Dr. Heather McNaugher, Anjali Sachdeva and Dr. David Blackmore always brought their great taste and hawk eye for craft to the final product. Thank you! Kristy Mahoney, our managing editor, was the journal’s hummingbird, always going, going, going to make sure all the work got done and done well. And of course, we thank our contributors whose work in this issue will, to quote a lyric from the great 1980s band They Might Be Giants, make a little birdhouse in your soul.

She’s sitting on my knee. Maybe there’s hope for our relationship after all.

Thanks for reading and being part of our murder, our murmuration, our parliament, our company. Our flock.

Sheila Squillante

Editor-in-Chief