The Kiskadee of Death Read Online Free

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.
    â€œYellow-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.
    â€œHang 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.
    â€œYup, 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.
    â€œYou see it?” I asked Luce, watching the bird through my binoculars.
    â€œGot it,” she answered.
    â€œWhat? 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.
    â€œA 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.
    â€œThere 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.
    â€œThank 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.”
    â€œNo problem,” I replied, continuing carefully to scan the