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Rachel admitted, and she couldn’t deny, it had creeped her out when Saxby had given her the once-over at the nature center. Tucking her feet up in the seat, she watched Dorothy flirt across the aisle through the notch between the headrests. “Maybe turnabout is fair play,” she said, jerking her head toward the front of the bus. “In this case, rather than a she’s May and he’s December romance, she’s December and he’s August.”
    Lark stuck her head out into the aisle and then quickly pressed back against her seat. “He’s October,” she corrected, “which means we have nothing to worry about.”
    • • •
    Rachel must have dozed off, for the next thing she knew she was jolted awake as the bus lurched to a stop in front of the Sapelo Island Ferry building. Propelled by the salty sea air and a bevy of birders, she made her way onto the boat; a half hour later, she found herself standing at the rail scanning the Sapelo Island shoreline.
    Waterfowl was scarce, the sign of an early spring, though several flocks of birds dotted the beach.
    “Does everyone see the great black-backed gulls?” Saxby asked, pointing along the beach. “Beyond them is a flock of terns. On the far left, you’ll see a gull-billed tern.”
    Rachel peered through her binoculars and panned the shore.
    “Do you see it?” Lark asked.
    “No.” Rachel swept her glasses over the huddled terns, butts to the shoreline, their faces tipped to the wind. “Wait, does it have a black crown and a short black bill? Sort of light gray, with a white breast?”
    “That’s it.”
    “I count more than one.”
    “There are twenty-four,” Saxby affirmed. “Does everyone have them?”
    A murmur passed through the crowd.
    A few moments later, Dorothy picked up a whimbrel. The large gray-brown bird with its strong black head stripes poked its downcurved bill at the sand like a picky eater knocking peas aside with a fork.
    Then the ferry docked, and Saxby gathered them around. “From here we go by hay wagon,” he said. “Everyone sit in the middle and look to the outside. Whatever you do, hang on.”
    Dorothy grabbed Rachel’s hand, pulling her up to the front to sit beside her and near Saxby. “Listen to him, dear,” she said. “He knows his birds. When he points them out, you’ll have a better chance of identifying them.”
    Rachel felt her feathers ruffle. The idea that Dorothy had announced she needed help annoyed her. Not that she didn’t need help, mind you, but she had gotten better at birding in the past couple of years. She may have been a little raw the last time she had birded with Dorothy, but since then she had gone out birdwatching on a weekly basis with Kirk. Maybe she should state the obvious—that she was Dorothy’s excuse for sitting near Saxby again.
    The wagon lurched forward, and Rachel anchored herself on a hay bale as the truck jounced away from the beach. Passing the dunes, they moved into a new zone where wax myrtles—dwarfed and entangled with cat brier, pepper vine, Virginia creeper, and Muscadine grape—formed a shrubby thicket.
    “We’re going to make a few stops,” Saxby announced. “This first habitat is called a shrub thicket. This will be the best location to see painted buntings, Acadian flycatchers, and yellow-rumped warblers.”
    “There’s one,” shouted an excited middle-aged woman.
    “Keep your voice down!” Saxby ordered.
    Startled, the woman’s chin quivered.
    Realizing his mistake, Saxby softened his expression, reached out, and patted her arm. “We need to use conversational voices when spreading the word,” he said in a gentler tone. “Here we are close enough to the birds that we don’t want to scare them. We want everyone to have a chance to see them.”
    “Acadian flycatcher,” Lark said. “Passenger’s side.”
    The woman flashed Saxby a watery smile and turned to look.
    “Painted bunting, two o’clock in the wax myrtles, driver’s side,” someone else called