MY KINGFISHER JOURNEY
Time was ticking. Rising from bed on an early June day, I felt unsettled. Somewhere on Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana, a pair of Belted Kingfishers tended their chicks snugged deep within an earthen burrow.
In May, I’d witnessed dawn flights coming and going from a mysterious location downstream from an arcing vertical bank peppered with nest holes. I suspected the parents were taking turns incubating eggs. Clearly, they had snubbed the equivalent of a kingfisher mansion that offered plenty of tennis-ball-sized holes for remodeling and fresh soil for new excavations.
Why hadn’t I found the active nest? It was time for a new tactic. Vowing to employ all the tricks of a naturalist, I arrived at the trailhead and did not hike, run, or walk along an established path. Instead, I sauntered, crawled through wild rose thickets, and squelched in mud for the half-mile leading upstream toward the perplexingly empty nest bank.
Often, I stopped to apply the art of wide and close focus. I took in the entirety of cottonwoods, ponderosa pines, and Douglas firs rippling against a lazuli sky. Then,
