by Jan Dunlap
She winked to assure us she was joking.
“Hey, Rosie!”
I turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered man, likewise dressed in khaki shorts and a floppy hat. He’d just stepped onto the deck from a trail on its east side, and he was heading our way. Even from a distance, I could tell he was an older fellow, judging from his leathered and lined face and the bushy white eyebrows that rose over his eyes. Binoculars hung around his neck and a backpack was slung over his right shoulder, and he carried a tall walking stick topped with what looked like part of a deer antler. He didn’t seem unsteady on his feet as he crossed the deck with a sure, long stride, so I guessed the walking stick was more for show than balance.
In fact, the closer he got to us, the more I was impressed with his straight posture and the lean muscles flexing in his legs. The man clearly kept himself in shape.
“Hey, Buzz,” Rosalie called back, “did you see the Pauraque this morning?”
“Not this morning,” the man told Rosalie. “Ask Birdy when he gets back. He was going to check out Alligator Lake. He said he was working on a park rarity for you. I headed over to Wader’s Trail to see the White-faced Ibis chicks, and got an unexpected treat myself—an Eared Grebe. I texted Birdy and a few other birders on my cell phone to hustle over here and see it, but the grebe wasn’t in the mood for company. It took off.”
“An Eared Grebe?” Rosalie said. Her face lit up with anticipation just before it crumpled in despair. “Gone?”
I had to chuckle to myself. Her expressions and tone of voice were as familiar to me as if I’d known her all my life. Every birder knows what it feels like to hear about a rare bird… that you just missed seeing. It’s like finding out that the person who was in front of you in a line to buy a lotto ticket at the gas station just won the jackpot.
So close, and yet so, so far away.
“Afraid so,” Buzz said. “You’re not the only one who missed out, Rosie. Cynnie Scott was on her way when I texted her back that the grebe was gone. She’s probably going to hold it against me personally, along with a host of other things.”
He stamped his big walking stick on the park deck to dislodge a few leaves that had stuck to its bottom.
“What can I say?” he said. “All’s fair in love and birding, right? You don’t always get what you want, but you generally end up with what you need.”
Rosalie seemed to consider her answer for a moment or two before she conceded.
“I suppose that’s true,” she said, though I thought I detected a decidedly uncertain note in her voice. It was gone with her next comment, however, as her voice took on a teasing tone. “I bet, right now, Cynnie would not agree with that.”
Rosalie suddenly seemed to realize Luce and I were still standing nearby, and she let the subject drop in order to bring Luce and me back into the conversation.
“Buzz and Birdy are two of our favorite Winter Texans at Estero Llano,” Rosalie explained to us. “They’ve been coming down here every winter for the last thirty years or so, and everyone knows that if it’s Wednesday, you can find Buzz and Birdy scouting the trails as soon as it is light. They know this park like they were born and raised here.”
“I wish I had been, but I wasn’t,” Buzz told us as he pulled a water bottle from his backpack and unscrewed its top. “I’m a Kansas boy originally,” he said, lifting his bottle in salute. “Name’s Buzz Davis. But I don’t think I can qualify as a Winter Texan anymore,” he added, “since I bought a home here two years ago. The city of Mission is my home now.”
I waited till he finished his drink, then introduced myself and Luce.
“Nice to meet you,” the new Texan said. Like every other Texan we’d met on our trip, he made sure to shake our hands in greeting and welcome us to the state. “Where are you folks from?”
“We’re fugitives from the frozen north,” I explained. “We live in Minnesota, just outside the Twin Cities. We decided we’d come and see how the warmer half of the United States lives.”
Buzz laughed, deep lines crinkling around his startling blue eyes.
“I don’t know if Texas qualifies for half of the U.S., though I’m sure you can find some native sons who would be pleased as punch to hear you say that,” he said. “The natives down here think that the sun rises and sets in Texas, don’t they, Rosie?”
He threw a broad wink at the volunteer naturalist, who responded with a polite smile.
“I’m guessing this is your first trip,” he continued, returning his attention to me and Luce, “if Rosie here is sending you out to find the Pauraque. It’s one of Estero Llano’s park specialties, since around here is about the only place in North America where you can count on finding it. Otherwise, you’d have to go to Central or South America to see it. It’s one of those lucky migrants that’s actually… welcomed… when it crosses the border here.”
His emphasis on the word “welcomed” caught my ear and sent a tickle of awareness down my spine.
Unless I misread his vocal inflection, the man wasn’t just talking about birds.
He was making a reference to what Luce and I had already found to be one of the standard topics of conversation in southern Texas: illegal immigration.
And while I’d always made it a policy to try to keep politics out of my birding excursions, I’d found in the last few days it was almost impossible to do that in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Local birders had almost as many stories to tell about immigration busts as they did about rare bird sightings. Most of the birders who had mentioned it to us were of the opinion that illegal immigration activity was simply a fact of life along the border corridor, and as long as they stayed focused on birds and not political issues, they could continue to bird in peace.
No reason to stir up a potential hornets’ nest, especially when access to so many species of birds was at stake. Birders might have tunnel vision when it comes to their hobby, but they’re certainly not blind to circumstances that might restrict that vision.
Buzz Davis, however, didn’t seem shy at all about broaching the topic.
Out of curiosity, I glanced at Rosalie for her reaction to Buzz’s comment, but she was suddenly intent on moving us along on our birding objective.
“If you want to see the Pauraque, you should probably get going over that way,” she said, ignoring Buzz and pointing to where he’d accessed the deck. “The bird gets harder to pick out from the vegetation along the trails when the sun is higher overhead. You lose the definition you get with shadows.”
Since Buzz didn’t add anything, and Rosalie bent over her chalkboard to update her observations, I looked at Luce and tipped my head in the direction Rosalie had indicated. “Shall we?”
“Sure,” Luce said, reaching for my hand. We walked off the deck and followed a sign that marked the way to Alligator Lake.
“Over there,” I said, suddenly stopping and lifting my binoculars to my eyes. “On that feeding platform. That’s a female Vermilion Flycatcher.”
Luce followed my gaze and then sighted the bird through her own binoculars.
“Good eye,” she said, “especially since the female only has that little bit of pale red color on her belly and undertail, unlike her hubby, who’s brilliant.”
Almost as if she had conjured the bird just by mentioning him, an adult male Vermilion Flycatcher flew past the feeding platform.
“Now, that is a red bird,” I said. The male perched in some scrub on the edge of the trail momentarily before it sped off again in pursuit of more insects.
“I got the impression Rosalie didn’t particularly appreciate the editorial comment about migrants Buzz made,” Luce said, still watching the female flycatcher.
“Yup, I thought the conversation turned rather abruptly back to our birding agenda,” I agreed. “Maybe the illegal immigrant issue along the border is a taboo t
opic for park volunteers,” I speculated. “After all, how many of these World Birding Centers are within miles—at most—of the border? I’m guessing it can’t be great publicity for encouraging tourism if you parade a local hot button in front of visitors. You don’t hear about the drug busts until you get here, either,” I pointed out. “Not that it matters. It takes a lot more than border conflicts and drug investigations to keep birders away from birds.”
“Parade!” Luce exclaimed. “That’s where I knew that name from.”
I glanced at Luce, who had stopped in the middle of the trail.
“What are you talking about?”
“Buzz Davis!” she said. “He was an astronaut before we were born. I saw him in a parade in the Twin Cities in 2000. He was Grand Marshall of the St. Patrick’s Day parade that year. He was like sixty years old then, but he sure didn’t look it. Seriously, I had a crush on him for years after that.”
I came back to where Luce was standing and put my hands on her shoulders.
“Are you saying I have competition for your affections?”
Luce smiled. “No. Never.”
She leaned in to give me a kiss.
“Especially if you look that good when you’re seventy-five, Bobby.” She patted my cheek. “I’ll have to beat off your admirers with a stick.”
“I love it when you talk that rough stuff. Will you marry me?” I asked her.
Luce laughed. “I already did.”
I slapped my head in mock surprise. “I knew you looked familiar.”
Luce punched me in the shoulder and we continued walking on the hard dirt path towards Alligator Lake. A left bend in the trail led us across a small footbridge over a drainage ditch to connect with another park trail called Camino de Aves. Thorn scrub lined the sides of the ditch, with woodland stretching out beyond it in a flat expanse broken by several narrow, shallow lakes.
“Do you think there are really alligators in the lake?” Luce asked as we passed a mounted map of the park that identified our position with a yellow star. “I don’t think of alligators as living in Texas,” she added. “Florida, yes. Texas, no.”
“Make that Texas, also yes,” I said, pointing to another sign that came into view as we neared the edge of what was clearly Alligator Lake.
The sign read Do not disturb the alligators.
“Okay, then,” Luce said. “I will definitely not disturb the alligators.”
A few yards ahead of us were three men and one woman, all with binoculars trained on the opposite shore of the small lake. Like Buzz and Rosalie, they were seniors, but judging from their lack of similarly well-tanned legs and arms, I guessed they were, like Luce and me, simply passing through. It occurred to me that just as you can identify a male from a female Vermilion Flycatcher by their distinctive coloration, you could as easily tell a visiting snowbird from a local resident.
The skin of the visitor was almost as white as a freshly plucked chicken waiting for the oven, while the resident was already nicely browned.
At the moment, I myself was mid-way between the two at par-boiled, thanks to the sunburn I’d gotten on Monday, our first full day of birding in Texas. At home, I usually remembered to put on the sunscreen the first time I get back outside in the spring since I’ve borne the curse of a redhead’s fair skin my whole life and endured many a painful peeling because of it. Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d get sunburned in January.
Until I got sunburned… in January.
Not that I’m complaining. If a sunburn was the price I had to pay to bird in Texas in January, I was happy to write the check.
The day after I got the sunburn, I was also happy to buy the bottle of sunscreen I’d already used in the parking lot this morning.
I stepped closer to the tall, elderly fellow nearest me to see where the other birders in his group were aiming their binoculars. The man wore a blue-and-black bandana around his head, and a long gray ponytail trailed partway down his back.
“Yellow-crowned Night Herons,” he said. “Over there on the bank.”
Unlike the older birders, neither Luce nor I needed to use our binoculars to get a good look at the herons. Three were perched in tree branches that hung low over the dark water of the shallow lake, with another two posed right along the shoreline. Their pale yellow crown stripes and white cheeks made them easy to recognize, and as we watched, the two herons on the shore slowly moved into the shallows of the pond, foraging for food. Since the other birds were perched in trees, I looked for nests, knowing that, where several pairs of birds are found, it’s likely that they’re members of a small colony that reuses the site for many years. Instead of nests, I caught sight of another bird partially hidden back in the drooping tree branches.
“Hang on,” I whispered to Luce, lifting my binos to focus in on the bird. “I think I got our Green Kingfisher.”
A quick look was all I needed to make the positive ID, the bird’s dark green plumage making the kingfisher almost invisible among the foliage at the edge of the lake.
“Yup, that’s it,” I confirmed.
The bird was about two-thirds the size of the more familiar Belted Kingfisher, but like its relative, the Green Kingfisher liked to perch while hunting for food in ponds and streams. Not only that, but the bird was generally found only in the southern half of Texas and southeast Arizona, making it the newest addition to my life list of birds.
It was another score for our trip. Texas was being very good to me.
“You see it?” I asked Luce, watching the bird through my binoculars.
“Got it,” she answered.
“What? What else are you seeing?” asked the woman in the little group we’d joined. She was at least a foot shorter than I was and had to crane her neck back to see me from under her straw hat’s wide brim.
I pointed across the water.
“A Green Kingfisher,” I said. “Look left of the Yellow-crowned Night Heron that just picked something out of the water, then up about six feet to that big fork in the tree. The Green Kingfisher is another couple feet left of that, at about ten o’clock.”
A moment of silence engulfed the group of birders while they all trained their binoculars on the spot.
“There it is,” said another of the men. He, too, had a straw hat on, I noticed, but it sat atop white hair reaching the collar of his colorful shirt. “See it?”
The two other birders each affirmed the sighting.
“Thank you,” said the woman in the straw hat. “That bird blends in too well for my old eyes to pick out. I never would have seen it on my own. Thank goodness you happened along.”
“No problem,” I replied, continuing carefully to scan the opposite shore through my binoculars. I wondered if there were any other park specials hiding along the shore.
“Is that an overturned canoe?” Luce asked. She was apparently looking at the same thing I’d just focused on. “And… an alligator sunning next to it?
“Correct on both counts, my dear,” I said. “I guess that definitively answers your earlier question, too.”
The alligator opened his reptilian eyes and I got a good look at the beast’s broad head. I continued to study the canoe behind him, wondering where it had come from on the little lake and why someone had left it overturned. A second later, I lowered my binos and used the corner of my shirt to wipe the lenses clean before raising the glasses back to my eyes.
Crap.
I wasn’t seeing a smudge on my lens, after all.
That really was a man’s hiking boot sticking out from beneath the end of the canoe.
A boot attached to a leg.
“I’m on vacation,” I muttered. “I don’t have time for this.”
I laid my binoculars on my chest and turned to the group of birders beside me.
“Does anybody have cell phone reception out here? Because we need to call the park office and the police,” I announced. “I think we’ve just added a dead man to today’s park list.”
Chapter Two
Thank you for your calm reaction when you realized you’d stumbled on another body,” Luce said to me an hour or so later as we sat down at a table on the park’s observation deck.
“I live to serve,” I responded half-heartedly, “though acting as a dead person locator service is not one of my preferred job descriptions. Especially when I’m supposed to be on vacation,” I added pointedly.
Luce patted my hand and continued.
“You did good, Bobby,” she reassured me. “Given the ages of those birders, we may have had a couple of heart attacks on our hands if, instead, you’d yelled ‘Call the cops! That’s a dead body!’ I mean, you and I have been down this road before, adding a dead man to our birding lists, but for these folks,” she nodded at the elderly birders on the deck, “I’m sure it’s a novel experience.”
“I sure hope so,” I muttered. “I’d hate to have to tell the next generation of birders that they should consider taking courses in forensics before they venture out into the field.”
Although that was exactly what I’d started to think might be a good idea for myself.
With my body count now up to eight over the last few years, I was beginning to harbor the suspicion that maybe I was in the wrong business with my job as a high school counselor. The idea of making a career out of searching for bodies was not one that filled me with excitement, though I had to admit, I could generally depend on finding more avian rarities when I was trying to help the police solve a murder case than I ever could manage from my tiny broom closet of an office at Savage High School. If I had my career planning to do over again, I’d for sure look at double majoring in forensics and natural history.
Today’s body, we learned, belonged to Birdy Johnson, Buzz Davis’s birding buddy. After our 911 call to the local authorities, a flock of park personnel had descended on us at Alligator Lake, quickly followed by a swarm of the Weslaco city police and a squad of emergency vehicles. One of the park maintenance men had put a small boat in the water and ferried the police chief across the lake to the abandoned canoe. Upon their approach, the alligator slipped off into the water and sought a quieter shore for sunning, leaving them gator-less access to the scene.