Where the Forest Meets the Star - Glendy Vanderah Page 0,15
put it in the car?” Ursa asked.
“Because people who make cars expect kids to ride in the back seat where it’s safest.”
“What if a truck hits the back of the car where the kid is sitting?”
“Are you going to follow my rules or not?”
She clambered into the back seat and put on a seat belt.
The dog ran after the car as they left the Kinney driveway. “Jo, stop! Stop!” Ursa pleaded. “He’s following us!”
“How will stopping help?”
Ursa leaned out the back-seat window and watched the dog vanish with a bend in the road. “He can’t keep up!”
“I don’t want him to. He can’t come to my study site. Bringing a predator would freak out my birds.”
“Jo! He’s still coming!”
“Stop hanging out the window. This road is narrow, and you’re going to get whacked by a tree branch.”
Ursa stared miserably at the passenger-side mirror.
“He knows this road. This is where he was born,” Jo said.
“Maybe he wasn’t. He could have jumped out of a car.”
“More like he was dumped out of a car by someone who didn’t want him.”
“Will you go back for him?”
“No.”
“You’re mean.”
“Yep.”
“Is that where Gabriel Nash lives?” Ursa asked, pointing at the rutted dirt lane and NO TRESPASSING sign.
“I think it is,” Jo said.
“Maybe Little Bear will go there.”
“Egg Man probably wouldn’t like that. He has chickens and cats.”
“Why do you call him Egg Man when his name is Gabriel?”
“Because buying eggs is how I know him.”
“I thought he was nice.”
“I never said he wasn’t.”
Jo drove to the farthest nest to make sure the dog didn’t catch up, turning around at the western end of the road and stopping at the first piece of flagging tape. She took out the data from the folder marked TURKEY CREEK ROAD and showed the page to Ursa. “This is called a nest log. I have one for every nest I find, and each one gets a number. This one is TC10, which means it’s the tenth nest I’ve found in my Turkey Creek Road study site. At the top of the log, I record information about where and when I found the nest, and on these lines underneath I record what I see each time I monitor it. The nest had two eggs in it the day I found it and four the next time. The last time I visited, it still had four, and I noted that I flushed the female off the nest.”
“Will the babies be hatched yet?”
“It’s too early. The female incubates for around twelve days.”
“Incubates means she keeps them warm?”
“That’s right. Let’s see how she’s doing.” They left the car, and Jo showed Ursa how she marked instructions on a piece of orange flagging that would direct her to the nest. “INBU is the code for indigo bunting, the main bird I study, and this is the date I found it. The other numbers and letters say the nest is four meters to the south-southwest, and it’s about a meter and a half off the ground.”
“Where? I want to see it!”
“You will. Follow me.” As they pushed through wet roadside weeds, the buntings remained silent. Not a good sign. They should be chirping alarm notes. Jo’s suspicions were verified when she saw the wrecked nest.
“What happened to it?” Ursa said.
“You have to figure that out, like a detective who looks at clues to solve a crime. Sometimes inexperienced birds build a weak nest that falls down. If the nest wasn’t constructed well, rainy weather like we had today could have made it fall.”
“Is that what happened?”
“From the clues I see, I don’t think so.”
“What are the clues?”
“First of all, I remember this nest was sturdy. Second, I see no eggs on the ground. Third, the parents are completely gone from the territory, which means this probably happened before the rain hit. And the biggest clue is how much the nest is torn apart. I’m guessing a raccoon pulled it down. If a snake or crow had gotten the eggs, there probably wouldn’t be that much damage.”
“The raccoon ate the eggs?”
“Whatever tore up the nest ate the eggs. On some nests I set up cameras so I know for sure what predator did it.”
“Why didn’t you have a camera for this one?”
“I can’t put cameras on them all. Cameras are expensive. Let’s go to the next nest.”
“Will they all be eaten by that stupid raccoon?” Ursa asked as they walked back to the car.
“I doubt it. But my hypothesis is that buntings will have lower nesting success in