Feather Fall

Only Birders in the Building: Burder Crimes Witnessed in Big Pine Key (Episode 2)

[[Author’s Note. This is an ongoing parody series showing off my poor wildlife photography skills, and stylized like a true crime blog. Birds were harmed in the making of this series, but that’s nature. The Key Deer are fine. I would reccomend starting at the beginning, but it’s not necessary. Also, scroll to the bottom to find links to new reviews for the Junior Rangers Investigative Club Novels.]]

At the beginning of Forrest Gump, we see a white feather drifting through the sky, as evocative music plays on screen.

No one ever asks where that feather came from. It’s blown along, carried by the wind and although it travels miles, we are only seeing it at the end of a journey which began long before it touches down at Forrest's feet in a display of gravity and air resistance that perfectly illustrates our understanding of the universe and our inability to conceptualize it through common sense.

Perhaps the feather is just a metaphor for the main character’s turbulent journey through life, the unexpected loops and swirls, the direction the wind takes us, the twists we never could have imagined. But unlike Forrest, who tells us of his beginning, the feather does not.

Its origin is unknown, the only thing certain is it must have been plucked from its previous owner. By time and decay, by the feathered owner itself, or perhaps in a violent act—another violent burderer. We have no way of knowing anything which happened to that feather before it appeared on screen, or to the poor bird to whom it was attached.

What I do know is the patterns a feather traces as it falls. I have witnessed it myself. The the ebbs and flows of an invisible force, which carry a feather through the air. And whether the feather falls at the end of a long molt or is plucked from a corpse at the end of its time, that pattern is still beautiful.

A falling feather, captured from a distance, but from whence did it come?

The first burder on my in our neighborhood probably, honestly, happened centuries or millennia ago. Birds have been fighting for time immemorial, and with easy access to any point touching the sky, they have been everywhere around the globe in droves. But the first burder in the current spree and the focus of this series occurred sometime in Nov. 2023.

The weather was triflingly cooler, cool enough that I did not sweat on my late afternoon walks. At least, not as much. But this didn’t help me to find the Hawk which was stalking the neighborhood. For one, Hawks fly, and have a wide hunting range, meaning that even if its base of operation were nearby, it might be out all day, up to whatever work it used as a cover for its violent behavior. For another, the hawk seemed keenly aware of my interest, and thus operated under a behavior pattern otherwise known as: flee-on-site.

Once again, my father called my while on a walk to inform me that he’d seen a hawk near the neighbors. The same house where I had witnessed before a gathering of local species, as the neighborhood key deer were known to frequent a particular patch of grass, while visiting the rabbit who lives in the same area.

A frequent neighborhood sight.

A hawk and a rabbit. That should give you pause. One is a predator, the other prey. And key deer, violent thought they might have been that November, (perhaps fueled and inebriated by the flesh of rotting pumpkin) would have been powerless to protect their long-eared friend from an aerial attack. Weight down by the cookies they should not be fed, and conditioned to fear no predators, their combat is only used for sport, to entertain the masses, and never for defense.

To survive in the wilds of Big Pine Key, Deer must train, and learn to be strong. (keep in mind, these two are about the size of small golden retrievers.

Fortunately for the bunny, My father and I had been narrowing down the species of Hawk we continued seeing. It was one of two species common to the keys. A Broad-winged hawk, or a red shouldered hawk. I, of course, having seen the bird less often, favored the idea that it was a red shouldered hawk. In the fall of 2022, one of those was a frequent sight in the neighborhood, so it only made sense that it was back, again. But red shoulders or broad wings, either way, they are smaller hawks, and therefor the rabbit should be safe. The rabbit was not out that day, and I haven’t seen him since, but he frequents the yard more often in the summers, and the Hawks reign of terror has lasted only three months, so I hope to see him again soon.

When my father alerted my to this new bird sighting, I saved my work, (at this point I was typing the final chapters of The Treasure of Biscayne Bay – out soon,) raced to put on my shoes and then walked, calmly down the road. As I reached the neighbor’s yard, a flash of feathers and a golden-brown shape glided from the lawn up and behind the house. Soon the hawk was gone, having fled into the abyssal skies, to a height I could not see.

Events like this happened often, and while my dad frequently sighted the bird, I just as frequently caught a glimpse of it flying away. Which is why I am unsurprised to have missed the events of that mid-November day entirely. This is a story from my father’s perspective, and all I can do is relay it to you.

On Friday mornings he likes to wake up, make coffee, and sit outside, listening to the local news. A representative from the Yankee Freedom a ferry boat which takes people to the Dry Tortugas, (a park where my father once worked, and his family once lived,) often comes on to talk about the trip. I would highly recommend it, and if you would like a study aid for your travels check out my dad’s book Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas or, if you are of a more fictional bent, but still enjoy learning, you could try my book Treasure off the Coast.  Listening to the talk radio, and drinking his coffee is his usual routine.

And this Friday was no different, except, that somewhere during the transfer of materials: Radio to outside table, more coffee to cup, or donut from microwave, my dad startled something in the trees. A by-then-familiar shape launched itself out of the giant mahogany tree in front of the house. The hawk! It had been here. Not just in the area, but sitting in the tree just outside of the house. Hiding, at eye level, amongst the branches.

At the time, my dad thought it was simply another sighting, a story he could tell me later. However, it became more than that when he went down to check the mailbox later. That was when he noticed a small collection of white, downy, feathers below the branch where the Hawk had perched.

We did not collect them. We did not report them. By the time my dad told me about them, the feathers had blown away, perhaps to start their own instrumentally-accompanied journey to a bus stop on the road we call life.

However, the more we talked about it, the more we agreed, there had been too many feathers for a quick preening session, and they were of the wrong size to have come from the hawk itself. It was only by piecing the events together backwards, and because of a slight breeze that we realized what must have happened.

That slight breeze carried with it more feathers from the branch above, too many feather in fact, enough to feather a whole bird. Enough feathers had been plucked to render that bird unable to fly. Fly they had not, at least not from that branch, or every again. The feathers we had found were remains, and that mahogany tree had been the site of a burder.

We acted quickly, but not fast enough. For fate and wind are fickle but persistent. The feathers blew away, our time was spent, and the criminal and remains of the victim were gone. We would have liked to make a formal report, but there is an age-old wisdom to bird-police, “No body, no crime” with our only evidence drifting away, unpredictably upon the wind, we were powerless to report the Hawk, much less stop it from killing again. And it would kill, you’ve seen some of the photos, with more to come.

Those were not taken in November, but on January 21, 2024. The day before I started this series. Another burder, another sky-crime. Right in front of our noses.

But back in November of 2023 we didn’t have the evidence to prove it. And we didn’t, yet, even have the evidence to prove our suspect existed. For, sightings aside, I’d yet to capture a picture of our suspect.

However, that was about to change. And that picture, the first of many, would change everything.

A feather drifting on the wind is a beautiful site, but you always have to ask, where did it come from?

To be Continued.

The feather from the earlier photo, moments before it was cast into the wind.

[[Author’s note 2: I recently got a second round of book reviews out for the first 2 Junior Rangers Investigative Club Novels!

Check them out here:

Treasure off the Coast: Amazon, Goodreads, or A Look Inside Book Review

Specters of Mammoth Cave: Amazon, Goodreads, or A Look Inside Book Review.]]