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At First Blush
Spotting a Rare Pink Bird Makes Everything Right
It is 3:30 a.m. I’m dragging myself from my bed, as I have every morning this week, to get on a bus, to wind through the Guatemalan highlands in search of birds. Birds that I have never seen; birds that are found in these hills around Lake Atitlán. We climb in the predawn dark, higher and higher. The air, spiked with the tang of wood smoke, cools. My stomach churns. Altitude sickness is taking its toll.
And I have an earache. Or: There is a gnome with an ice pick, stabbing it with numbing regularity into my eardrum. I curl up into a fetal position on the vinyl seat, dimly aware of the low conversations all around me. Ow. Ow. Ow. Why am I here?
Well, there is a bird in the forest atop this volcano, very small, and pink. And we all want to see it. There are few pink birds on Planet Earth, and many of them are in trouble. I comb through them in my mind. There are flamingos, of course, and roseate spoonbills. Those are the obvious ones. Then there is the evanescent wash on the breast of the roseate tern, a secretion of its preen gland in breeding season. The same wash on Ross’, Franklin’s and Sabine’s gull. All rare. There is a pink-backed pelican in South Africa. A pink pigeon in Madagascar, almost gone. And there is the rare pink-headed warbler that sings its sibilant song on the flanks of extinct volcanoes in Guatemala. We are after this one. And so I curl myself tighter, riding waves of pain and nausea, waiting for this halting four-hour climb to end.
We tumble out of the bus and load into four-wheel-drive jeeps. The cold air makes me feel better. On we jounce, past the gardens and farm fields that cover the sides of the volcano. Finally we reach a point where the jeeps can no longer navigate. We’ll walk from here.
The forest is thin, yellow, lit by the sun. It does not look or feel tropical; it looks like Arizona. We climb and climb, carrying our spotting scopes, our cameras, our binoculars, our field guides. We might as well be wearing cinder blocks around our necks. There are two Brits, two Canadians, a Texan, some Californians, two Ohioans. We all want to see this bird.
A group of Mayans comes up behind us. The women are laden with bundles, mats, food, water. All are wearing rainbow-colored hand-loomed clothing, the men in cowboy hats. They are on their way to the top of the volcano, to pray for rain. Dust wells around our boots as we continue climbing, watching the Mayans disappear. I wonder what they would think if they knew the object of our quest. By late morning we’ve been climbing for two hours, nearing the crater. The Mayans are doubtless already there, setting up for their service. We slog on.
We hear a silvery song in the low forest by the trail. It is hopping through the leaves, a round ball of feathers the texture of silk brocade. Its head, pale pink, darkening to rose on its tiny body. Its eye, a black button. Thin legs vault it from twig to twig. It looks like a Hostess Snowball on toothpicks. I can’t get enough of it and struggle to keep my binoculars on it as it flits and hovers. A pink bird, precious and rare.
My ear no longer hurts. I feel my heart in my chest, the breath in my lungs. I have seen a pink-headed warbler. I look up to the sky. The clouds promise rain.
—Julie Zickefoose
Julie Zickefoose is a commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and the author
of Letters From Eden: A Year at Home, in the Woods
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