Your description of the bird is fantastic. The tension in the scene well narrated. Great work.

I think this is an interesting counterpoint to its prequel but I find that I can’t quite express what I get from it. It is a simple moment in time, a moment when simply being should be enough, when our capacity for contemplative thought will cause nothing but grief.

There are two words that you’ve used with meanings that seem to be their opposites: feigns and alight. To feign is to pretend which seems to be what the bird is doing, so the sentence would seem to prefer an and rather than a but. To alight is to land or settle, but it seems that you’re using it to mean depart, or I’m misreading the sentence. In the final paragraph, breaths should be breathes.

That’s one still rifle! It’s a nice juxtaposition between life and potential death or threat of death.