Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

  “That sounds pretty good, Robby.” His mom was talking in her isn’t-that-nice voice.

  Robby hesitated. “Will we see all of them?”

  “All the eggs haven’t hatched yet. But we’ll visit areas with both brooding chicks and nests, yes,” Ruth said.

  Robby thought about it. He wanted to be on the patrol. Ruth said the plovers were endangered, and that was even worse than threatened. So someone had to keep the dog walkers and kite flyers and predators away. Why couldn’t they let him? He’d be the best patroller ever. No one would dare disturb the nests. Inside he felt the anger squeeze his stomach.

  But the hike sounded good, too. Chicks and nests? What he read online had said all the eggs would be hatched by now. Ruth must know more, and she was going. She was OK. He would put the heron in the Great Lakes playlist. He rolled the pencil between his fingers, back and forth, thinking.

  “Deal,” he said.

  “Morning, folks. I’m Ruth Heron, and I’ll be leading our hike today.”

  Robby glanced at his watch, pleased she was right on time. It was 6:58 a.m. Ruth wore a wide-brimmed hat and had another, single-lens device slung around her neck in addition to binoculars. His dad had given him his old Sears binoculars to wear around his neck, too. Everyone else in the group outside the Visitors Center had binoculars as well, plus a camera or two apiece.

  “As you all know, the plovers are an endangered species here in the Great Lakes,” Ruth said. “Their breeding season is under way, and so far this looks like a better-than-average year for fledging.”

  “How many nests?” asked a man with a tripod.

  “Ten. With four eggs each, we’d hope to only lose half,” Ruth said.

  Robby heard his mother gasp. “Only half? My goodness, that seems high.”

  “Survival of the fittest,” Ruth said, flatly. “This year, though, we’ve had twenty-four hatch already, with a few nests still to go.”

  A murmur of appreciation went around the group. Robby saw Ruth smile briefly. It vanished just as quickly.

  “Migration is still well over a month away, though,” she said. “We’ll caravan out to the north end of the park first. Most of you know the rules. Be quiet. Don’t leave any trash, and pick up any that you see. Observe the roped-off breeding areas, and don’t approach any plover families if you find them beyond the fence. Any questions?”

  No one spoke. “All right. Take five minutes, fill up your water bottles, put on your sunscreen. We’ll be out for a couple hours this morning, and it’s going to get hot.”

  Water bottles and sunscreen. Robby looked anxiously at his mom. “Did you bring water bottles and sunscreen?”

  She frowned. “I’ll check in the car. Keys, Sam?”

  His dad reached into his pocket as the others drifted apart. Robby jerked the strings on his sweatshirt, tightening the hood over his head, and then jammed his hands in his pockets. Would they be allowed to go on the hike if they didn’t have the right stuff?

  “Relax, Robby,” his dad said.

  Easy for him to say. He’d been waiting weeks and weeks and now, finally, the plovers were minutes away. Robby scuffed his toe into a clump of weeds growing in the sandy dirt and stooped to pick one. He had seen water bottles and sunscreen for sale in the Visitors Center yesterday, but it wasn’t open yet today. Still, Ruth would have a key if they needed to get inside. Wouldn’t she? He twirled the weed between his fingers, watching his mom rummage in the car.

  “Ready to see your first piping plovers?”

  Robby barely heard Ruth’s voice beside him, shrouded in his hood and focused on the problem of water and sunscreen. Beyond the orbit of the weed’s fuzzy green head, his mother slammed the car door and turned around. A water bottle dripped from one hand. In the other, a container that looked like it could be sunscreen, suspended from two fingers.

  She’d found it. Robby felt limp as his anxiety drained away. They could go!

  “Robby?” Ruth’s hat was tilted to the side. “Ready to see your first piping plovers?”

  “Yeah!” As his relief erupted, Robby jumped in the air, dropping the weed. Ruth stepped back quickly. Robby bounced on his toes, trampling the weed. A cloud of dust swirled up past his ankles.

  “Here you go, Robby.” His mom was there with the sticky sunscreen bottle. Robby wrinkled his nose.

  “It stinks.”

  “Want me to do it?”

  “No.” He rubbed it over his face and legs, hard and fast, and thrust the bottle back at her. Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s go see the birds.

  “You’ve got a blob on your forehead. Here, let me.” His mom reached for him.

  Robby ducked, swatting her hand away.

  “Come on, Robby.”

  “Linda.” His dad came at them sideways, speaking quietly. “It’s not worth it. Let it go.”

  His mom hesitated. “Fine,” she said in her not-fine voice, capping the bottle.

  “Sure you want to wear that sweatshirt?” Ruth asked. “It’ll be hot on the beach.”

  “He’ll be fine,” his mom said quickly, as Robby nodded vehemently, thrusting his hands in the pocket.

  “All right.” Ruth shrugged. The four of them crossed the parking lot to join the rest of the group, dust clouds obscuring their feet.

  “We really need rain,” Ruth said, working her toe into the dusty lot. “It’s been dry all spring.”

  “There’s supposed to be a big storm tonight,” volunteered an older man who carried a single-lens scope like Ruth’s and wore a photographer’s vest covered in pockets.

  “I heard. Maybe it’ll help us catch up.” Ruth glanced around the group. “Everyone ready? All right. Let’s go see some plovers.”

  In her park service truck she led the caravan out of the parking lot and turned north. Robby exhaled deeply, blowing his bangs out of his eyes. Finally.

  After half an hour of trudging along the beach through ankle-deep sand, Sam paused to wait for Linda. Robby’s gray sweatshirt receded as he trotted ahead with Ruth, oblivious to his lagging parents.

  “How you doing?”

  She wiped a strand of hair from her eyes. “Hot. Tired.”

  “At least we’re not lugging camera gear like the rest of them. If this was a trail it’d be fine, but the sand just makes it brutal,” Sam said. “I sink with every step.”

  “Life with Robby.” Linda shrugged. “Even on vacation, we can’t escape it.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Not like you to be so pessimistic.”

  Linda sighed. “Sorry. Early onset summer blues, maybe. You know how he gets when school’s out. Without those routines, he falls apart.” She took a long drink from the water bottle.

  “Maybe this year will be different. He’s got his playlists, and the Audubon club and all.”

  “Yeah. But every time I let myself go there, thinking things are getting better, hoping, it blows up in my face. Stealth autism. Like with this whole birdcall obsession.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it was dumb. I should have known better.”

  “Come on. Tell me.”

  Linda hesitated. “OK. So, the calls, the songs, that’s how birds communicate, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, when Robby got so into them, after you went to that conference, I convinced myself it might make him start communicating more.” She looked down at the sand, then up at Sam. “With us.”

  “Oh, Linda.” Sam shook his head. He felt the familiar hollow gaping inside him, the hollow where the right words should be, if there were any words that could compensate for what Linda craved. “Jeez.”

  “But all he does is download those calls and make his playlists. Then he disappears into his headphones again. He’s as isolated as ever.”

  She sighed. They walked silently for a moment.

&
nbsp; “He seemed to connect with the ranger,” Sam ventured.

  “True.” Linda’s voice brightened. “I thought we were headed for a meltdown for sure yesterday, after she told him he couldn’t do that patrol thing. But he kept it together.”

  “He’s really into these birds, and she is, too.” Ahead, Robby and Ruth’s figures were no longer moving. Sam and Linda were gaining on the rest of the group. “Looks like we’re almost there.”

  Ahead, the group had stopped twenty yards shy of a roped-off section of beach. The camera club members went into action, whipping out their tripods, mounting cameras, uncapping lenses. Robby lifted his binoculars to his eyes and stared out, too. What does he see, Sam wondered.

  “Here we are. Home sweet plover home,” Ruth said, raising her scope and training it down the beach. “If you’ll all look for the exclosure—it looks just like a mesh box—that’s down near that little spit, back from the shoreline—oh dear. Oh, no.”

  “What? What?” The group aimed their binoculars and scopes where Ruth had. Sam saw Ruth lower hers as the rest swept the beach. Briefly her head bowed before she spoke again, in a steady, resigned voice.

  “I’m sorry, folks. If you look under the exclosure, you’ll see a smashed egg. It’s more speckled than the rocks around it. And I don’t see any adult plovers around. It appears that this is a deserted nest.”

  “What happened?” the man in the photographer’s vest asked.

  “I wish I could tell you. Probably a predator got it—either the eggs, the parents, or both.”

  “But isn’t the exclosure supposed to protect them?” a woman asked.

  Ruth shrugged. “It doesn’t always work. The parent plovers have to go in and out to feed. If something happens to one while it’s out, the other abandons the nest.”

  “Why?” It was Linda’s voice.

  “That’s just the way it is. Incubation is shared. Depending on the timing, the one who survives might find another mate and start a new nest.”

  “Really? Right away?” Linda asked.

  Ruth nodded. “Plovers aren’t sentimental. They find another mate and get on with it.”

  “There’s Mother Nature for you,” commented the man with the vest.

  Plovers aren’t sentimental, Sam thought, the hollow inside him yawning again. Like someone else he knew, he thought, glancing over at Robby.

  But Robby wasn’t there.

  Sam’s pulse quickened. Instinctively he spun to the lake. The calm dark-blue surface rippled placidly, stretching uninterrupted to the horizon. Sam felt an instant of relief, followed by another stab of alarm. Where could—

  “Hey! Ruth!” It was Robby’s voice. Sam looked up. His son was twenty yards down the beach, standing right next to the rope, waving.

  “Ruth! Two more eggs!”

  “Robby!” Linda shook her head. “You’re supposed to stay back!”

  But Ruth was striding across the sand. “Show me!”

  The man with the photographer vest hesitated, then pulled up his tripod and followed her. Sam looked at Linda and shrugged. They jogged to the rope, where Robby was pointing.

  “There, by that fallen log, about five feet from the smashed one. The log kind of shadows them right now, but I think—”

  “I see them. You’re right. Two eggs. You’ve got sharp eyes, Robby,” Ruth said. “I’ve got to radio this in right now.”

  “Who do you call?” Robby asked.

  “Dispatch, to send a patrol out. We need to start monitoring immediately, to determine if the parents are still around and tending the nest. If they’re not, we’ll collect those eggs and try to raise them in captivity.”

  “Will you keep them together?” Robby asked, his eyes pinned on Ruth’s face.

  “Definitely,” Ruth said, reaching for her radio on her hip, taking in the group that had followed. “Back down the beach, now, all of you,” she commanded. “We don’t want to scare the parents, if they are still around.”

  Robby backed away, keeping his eyes on the exclosure.

  Linda herded him away from the group. “Robby, you knew the rules. What made you go so close?”

  “Ruth said the parents abandoned the nest.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And she only saw one smashed egg. There’s supposed to be four.” He was still walking backward.

  “OK, but Robby—”

  “So I had to find out about the others. I was worried about them.”

  “You were worried about them?” Linda stared at Robby.

  “Yeah.” Robby nodded.

  “He was worried,” Linda whispered, grabbing Sam’s arm. “He was worried!”

  “I stayed behind the rope,” Robby said. “That was the rule. ‘Observe the roped-off breeding areas.’ ”

  Sam smiled to himself. That was the rule. Word for word.

  “I had to find out,” Robby repeated, looking up at Sam.

  “It’s OK, Robby.” Squeezing Linda’s hand, Sam looked over his shoulder. Ruth was tucking away her radio now, jogging toward them, her long braids swinging off her shoulders. Seeing her, too, Robby stopped.

  “Monitors are on their way,” she reported. “They’ll look around for the fourth egg, too, but my guess is a predator got it.” She turned to Robby. “Robby, I’m so glad you were here. Spotting those eggs gives us another chance. Great work.” She held her hand up for a high five.

  Sam watched as Robby, without a moment’s hesitation, slapped hands with Ruth. And his unsentimental son smiled.

  The plover patrol summoned, they continued hiking down the beach. At the next stop they watched two parent plovers tend a full brood of four chicks running around the beach. Following the photographer’s cue, Robby lay on his stomach, chin propped on the sand, to get a better view.

  “These four hatched day before yesterday,” Ruth said.

  “Really?” Linda said, surprised. “And they’re already running around?”

  Ruth nodded. “Plovers only stay in the nest their first hour or so.”

  “You’re kidding,” Linda said. “They don’t sound very nurturing.”

  “You’re looking at it through human eyes. It’s different in the wild,” Ruth said. “Now the goal is independence. These guys have to be ready for a thousand-mile flight in six to eight weeks.”

  Sam felt Robby at his elbow.

  “Your turn to look, Dad!”

  “What?”

  “The plovers. Feeding and playing together.” He lifted the strap over his head. “Take a look.”

  “Yeah?” Sam raised the binoculars to his eyes. “Show me where.”

  “Middle of the beach. Beyond those stones where their nest was. See it? Do you see them?”

  Sam scanned the sand slowly. “No.”

  “Get down like this.” Robby splayed himself on the sand again. Sam hesitated, then awkwardly crouched next to Robby.

  “Let’s take just a few more minutes. We’ve got one more nest to see yet,” Ruth announced.

  Sam panned the beach again more quickly. Frustration swelled as he recalled another journey, undertaken another day, hundreds of miles from this beach, but destined to be just as isolating. The autism evaluation team had pushed their written assessment of Robby across the conference table at him and Linda. Bold black check marks appeared next to each of the diagnostic criteria. Sam remembered the first one best:

  Qualitative impairment in social interaction . . . a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment or interests . . .

  Now here was Robby, spontaneously sharing his interest in these birds. And Sam couldn’t find the damn things.

  “Aim one eye on the water and one on the beach.” It was Ruth’s voice. “They’re closer to the shoreline than you’d think.”

  Sam adjusted his gaze. Still nothing. Then he heard it, the se
quence of mid-range peeps he remembered from Robby’s computer. He swung the binoculars that way.

  “There, Dad, right there!” Robby knocked his elbow, tilting the binoculars. And then Sam saw them: four tiny, dirty-white birds on stick legs.

  “I see them! I see them, Robby. And I can hear them, too.”

  “Seeing an endangered species in their native habitat is a rare privilege,” Ruth told the group. “Especially with their young.”

  “Isn’t it cool, Dad? Mom, do you want to see? Let her look.”

  “Sure.” Linda crouched down next to him, beaming.

  Sam handed the binoculars over, feeling the hollow inside fill with an unfamiliar blend of flavors. Gratification. Contentment. Wonder.

  “Here, take these,” offered the man with the photo vest. “I’ve got an extra set.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said. Alongside their son he and Linda watched, basking in the rare privilege of the moment.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Let’s just stop here for a second, Christopher.”

  Turning, Christopher saw Arthur Felk heading toward a bench a few steps off the trail. Though he was a good twenty paces behind, Christopher could hear him panting. He frowned. They had been out for less than half an hour on the easiest path through the Sapsucker Woods sanctuary, and Felk was already winded. How could the ornithologist have thought he could handle the rocky peaks and elevations of northern Vermont?

  Dr. Felk had called a few weeks ago to change their plans for the Bicknell’s thrush hunt. He planned to set up an endowment, he said, and wanted to take both Christopher and Deborah out to dinner to talk it over. He’d arrive after lunch, and in the afternoon, they could explore the sanctuary instead.

  “You know Deborah’s in the law school advancement office. Not the Lab’s,” he reminded Felk.

  “I know, Christopher,” Felk said. “Just invite her, OK?”

  Reluctantly he left a message for Deborah, but she hadn’t called back. Now he wondered if they’d make it to dinner themselves. He joined Felk on the bench and held out his water bottle.