"Spotted" by Crystal Taylor

I scanned through my binoculars, thinking I was alone until I saw a man peering back at me through his own. I had been spotted. The ornithology lab sent a rare bird sighting alert: an Inca Dove in the botanical gardens a couple of hours prior to my trip. Never having seen one, I stuffed sunflower seeds in my trench coat and sped over, with my unique obsession. She had somehow traveled out of her range on the coldest day of the year, which just so happened to be my day off work, a Tuesday. I just knew she would be hiding by the pond, but she wasn’t alone, as I had expected.

The pond was the perfect place for her to hunker, as many birds had over the years. I couldn’t go down there, alone, because being alone with men had never gone well for me in the past. Damn him. Livid that I couldn’t go birdwatching without a chaperone, I simmered near the exit gate, where I felt safer. I was determined to wait him out, but the wind pricked my face like a woodpecker with a needled beak for over an hour. 

I lost hope when the man slid a sandwich out from his backpack. He stood up and started walking but left his backpack on the bench. Damn him. Then, I realized he was walking toward me, sandwich in hand. I froze in place. He peered past me as if he were hypnotized. I thought he might have been medicated or on the spectrum, like me. I wanted to run out screaming, but his steps were as soft as a baby crawling. He didn’t speak, but his icy breath hung in the grates of the gate a few feet away from me. He pointed his leather glove to the lattice about ten yards from where I had been standing the whole time. There she was: the dove was puffed up and exposed to the blustery wind. 

I thanked him with the realization that he might have been the one who reported the sighting. At the very least, he knew about Inca Doves and was the kind of person who would endure the elements and prepare a lunch to ensure he saw one. I felt guilty for assuming the worst of him. We shared a unique obsession, if not more.

He turned away and walked back to the pond, eating his sandwich, while I stayed behind and lobbed sunflower seeds toward her. She eyed me like I was a predator: a hawk, or hunter. I sifted the seeds from my pockets into a mound near the ground cover and hoped it would shield her from the wind and actual predators. I left her to fuel up for the night or make it to her next stop, then looked over my shoulder all the way home.