[ Fortexrostrum coxi (Sharpe, 2020) ]
Did you ever lose your hooks when you were fishing? Know how it feels to have a mighty tug on your line and think that it must be at least a whale who’s taken a fancy to your bait? Then you felt the line go limp, pulled it in, and found your hook gone. “A big fish must have got it,” you mourned.
Well, up in the North Woods the old fishermen assure you that it isn’t any fish that got your hook. Not at all: it’s the sizzerbill.
Now the sizzerbill is a mean customer. He’s always hanging around the weeds and rushes and in other places close to the shore. He’s mighty clever at keeping himself out of sight.
When he sees a fish struggling to free himself he will dart out under the water and—snip, snip—with his bill he cuts the line very neatly. And away goes the fish, free once more. And away goes the sizzerbill, off to another hiding place to make trouble for some other fisherman.
The sizzerbill is really half bird and half animal. He’s growing rarer and rarer, and it is only every year or so that some old guide up in northern Wisconsin or Minnesota reports that he caught a sight of one of these tricky fellows as he made for one of his favorite hiding places among the reeds.
