Friday Fiction

Well, I didn't win this month's First Friday competition! (The winning story, was, indeed, deserving of the honor.) As one of my chefs during my ill-advised tour through cooking school would say, "Too bad, so sad!" And also, "There's no crying in cooking." And by extension, nor in writing.

My consolation is that the interwebz is a place where any loser with delusions of talent can post any ole thing while hunkered down in Mom's basement in his/her underwear. (For the record, right now I'm hunkered down in place I pay for myself, with a Yellow-throated Warbler at my peanut feeder and jeans and a comfy sweatshirt over my underwear.)

And here's my story. Because I have to do something with it! Amusez-vous bien.

Big Day

Ed loved birds before he loved me, and he taught me to love them too. I started my life list the day we met. He proposed to me the morning I saw my first Lazuli Bunting. And we've celebrated every anniversary with a Big Day, often dragging our reluctant children along.

Now our life lists are in the thousands, and the children are complaining about our Big Days again.

"You're not supposed to drive at night, remember?"

"We're only out a little before sunrise, dear. "

"But how will we find you if something happens?"

Even some of our birder friends have started up with these lectures. Ed thinks they're just jealous.

But we'd never give up our special day, not with so much left to see. This morning, Ed took me to Santiago Oaks, just as we'd planned: our first Big Day started here, long before it became a park. "Our big day will always be a Big Day," Ed said, squeezing my hand. "Happy anniversary."

We started on the rim of a gorgeous ravine. Phainopeplas swooped overhead, and a few feet down the ravine, brilliant flashes of blue shot through the brush: my favorites!

“Ed, look! Lazuli Buntings!”

Ed aimed his camera down the ravine. “Will you look at that. Bill’s going to be awful jealous when he sees my shots of these little guys.” He stepped off the trail.

“Ed—don’t!”

“It’s not that far; I just need to get a bit closer for this shot.”

“But look how steep it is!”

“Claire, I know what I’m—DAMN!”

I heard gravel and dry twigs giving way under his feet, and instinctively, I reached out and grabbed his wrist. But Ed’s a lot bigger than me, and we both tumbled into the brush.

Somehow, we both managed to make it back up to the trail, with Ed cursing the whole time. “My camera! Damned lens is cracked! And no one will fix this model anymore!”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay.”

He looked at me and smiled. “Of course it is, dear. At least we found those Lazulis. I don’t even need to go down there; look how bold they are.”

The Lazuli Buntings were now in the bushes right off the trail, just uphill from us. They didn’t seem to notice as we approached them. We moved closer. The Lazulis flitted about, oblivious to our presence.

We sat on a flat rock just across the trail from them and watched, mesmerized. I didn’t even need my binoculars to get a close look at them—every wingbeat, every tiny twitch and flutter was crystal-clear. We no longer cared if our Big Day count stayed in the single digits.

“Wow,” Ed said softly, “It doesn’t get any better than this, does it?”

From where he was facing, Ed couldn’t see the startled hikers pointing down the ravine, the ranger yelling into his walkie-talkie, or the paramedics struggling to carry two stretchers down the hillside. But I think he knew.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

Spacing Out

Goodies and loot in the exhibition hall at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival

The coastal areas around Cape Canaveral are know for exceptional birding spots; birding festivals are known for attracting exceptional talents in the craft and science of birding, so it stands to reason that a birding festival just north and inland of Cape Canaveral would be an event to remember. And it was. Sort of.

This year's Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival was a sprawling five-day bird orgy, featuring both Kenn Kaufman and David Sibley as keynote speakers, and every seasoned Florida bird-nerd with a quadruple-digit life list as a field trip guide. Glenn and I got there on Friday afternoon, the third day of the festivities (and the first day I could get away from work), and jumped into the fray.

It didn't take long for us to find birds: in the back of the exhibit hall was a collection of rehabilitated raptors, courtesy of the Raptor Project. The raptors somehow managed to look both fierce and cuddly at the same time:

The star of the show was an Bald Eagle named Uncle Sam, who lost part of a wing tip in a collision with a car. He was prominently perched in front of a large American flag:

The ringleader of the raptor exhibit put on several shows, which ended with soaring music, a spotlight on Uncle Sam, and an affirmation of how wonderful life is in the U. S. of A. It was heartfelt and sincere, though I couldn't help remembering that my first-ever sighting of a Bald Eagle took place in Canada. And the graphic effect of the eagle against the flag made me think of this.

An ironic thing about bird festivals is that I always end up seeing fewer birds than I would in a typical weekend stomping around at home, and this time was no exception—this was largely because all the field trips we would have liked were filled by the time we got around to registering. But we did get to attend a number of informative workshops on warbler and raptor ID, and the effects of weather on bird migration. They were all clearly presented and useful—but just made me want to go out and See Stuff.

The one field trip we managed to get into was focused on ducks at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We saw hundreds of them—but all were ones familiar to us from California (including a Eurasian Wigeon), and almost all seemed to be miles away; discernable only with spotting scopes. Yawn.

So Glenn and I amused ourselves with birds that were, to our mind, a bit more interesting—such as this immature Roseate Spoonbill, who flew in to feed only feet away:

Just outside the reserve, we also saw some exceptionally bold gulls shamelessly harrassing Brown Pelicans for food:

Just before we returned home on Sunday afternoon, we attended Kenn Kaufman's keynote address, "Pride in the Name of Birding" I suspect he'll want to give it again, so I won't give up too much of it, except to note that it involved a number of shaggy dog tales, some of which involved actual (or imagined) dogs:

On our way out back to our car, and our drive back home, we ran into a couple of Gainesville birding pals—who announced excitedly that just outside the auditorium, a Cattle Egret had just eaten a female/immature Painted Bunting (the latter was already dead; probably from a window collision). And we'd missed it by minutes.

Oh well. What do you expect to find at a birding festival—birds or something?