The Return of Short Fiction Tuesday

Our guests just left this morning, so I can't say I've read a lot of online fiction this past week, but I did enjoy this week's Strange Horizons story, "Out of Sombra Canyon." It's a story of a couple who are scientists studying an elusive, possibly extinct, hummingbird in the American Southwest. It's not the first speculative fiction story I've read in recent years centering on a search for a species that might or might not be extinct, and I know I've found myself captivated with nonfiction reports of similar searches. I think it skirts the edge of that cryptozoology sense of adventure and the unknown while staying rooted in something more plausible--that's my theory at the moment for why it makes for an intriguing premise. A story is not merely premise, of course, and this story is otherwise completely different from the other one I'm remembering.