Free Border Songs by Jim Lynch Page A

scope and zoomed in on little Judson Lake. He spotted a hunched green heron, then a fully extended blue heron and a smattering of ducks, including a cinnamon teal,
eighteen
, the color of clay. He surveyed the water again, then stepped into the woodlands, making
pishing
sounds until some curious chickadees, warblers and juncos flushed to be counted. He strolled deeper into the forest and patiently went through his owl calls. First the northern pygmy, then, after a pause to clear the air, a screech owl, followed by a barn and a greathorned, all the while scanning branches for football-shaped bodies. After giving up on owls, he sped into the brightening valley toward the Mount Baker Highway to see what he could find before hitting snow.
    The highway followed the foamy Nooksack up through cathedrals of cedars and birch and young hemlock as graceful as ballerinas. He watched treetops for incoming flocks and took side roads and quick strolls, drawing out a red-breasted sapsucker, a MacGillivray’s warbler and three different sparrows. He spotted an American dipper,
twenty-seven
, popping its signature knee bends on rounded river rocks, then sped higher past fake Bavarian lodges and steep green hillsides with firs angling skyward like arrows. When the road snowed out he parked and strode swiftly until he broke into a bright thawing meadow and stood there to listen. He heard the mock battle cry of a pileated woodpecker, then the chimelike mountain bluebird and a Townsend’s solitaire compensating for its drab appearance with its catchy mating riff:
Doesn’t my song sound great to you? Doesn’t my song sound great to you?
Then a ruffed grouse in the bush somewhere drumming louder and louder until a red-tailed hawk glided through, low and fast and effortless, shutting everyone up with an irritable scream that sounded like an incoming Piccolo Pete. Before leaving, Brandon heard the one-note song of the varied thrush,
thirty-three
, its long tone setting off a series of other peeps, trills and warbles just as one clear flute tunes a concert band.
    He followed the Nooksack out of the hills and felt the blush of exposure that came with rolling out of Baker’s cool canopy into the low, blinding valley. The stench and heat intensified. Time slowed. There was little shade and few hiding places. Everyone saw what you were up to, and the smarter ones could tell how well you were doing it. Brandon sped past Dirk Hoffman’s latest political statement—hundreds of shin-high crosses in orderly rows like a miniature Arlington National under his exhortation to: STOP SLAUGHTERING THE UNBORN . Farther west, cows were bounding in pastures like rambunctious calves. Seeing them play relaxed him, just as it enraged him to see them bullied. How could anyone be cruel to animals that were powerfulenough to walk through walls yet hated to be alone and balked at stepping over hoses, puddles or even a bright line of paint?
    Brandon roared out of the valley along back roads toward Tennant Lake, where he spotted widgeons, coots, mallards and canvasbacks before climbing out of the truck. He heard a marsh wren trill as soon as he stepped on the boardwalk, then a gadwall burp. He strolled past a bittern without blowing its cover, its eyes on the sky, its streaked vertical neck blending with the reeds. He saw common yellowthroats and heard nine different songbirds. Heading back out, he lobbed rocks into the reeds until he was rewarded with the unmistakable whistle and croak of a Virginia rail,
fifty-one
.
    Brandon was eleven when his mother introduced him to the secret society of people who knew more about birds than he did. Most of them seemed like fussy librarians and doctors, but he looked forward to their Christmas bird counts more than Christmas itself. And they soon fought over him to boost their counts, especially after he won the twenty-four-hour birding contest, despite grumblings about insufficient documentation on 5 of the 118 species he’d claimed