Day 1, the beginning

My trusty iPhone alarm went off at 4:30am, and I poked my head out of my sleeping bag. Where was I again?? Oh yeah - in the back of my Forester, curled up against all my radio equipment, on a rough rocky clearing near the romantic Sewage Lagoons by Signal Mountain, by the edge of the forest, near our bird.

Our goal was to get up and packed before the wild birds, including our crossbill, woke up. It was still pitch black; bright stars overhead; the whole Milky Way spread against the sky. A single brilliant light shown especially brightly - Venus or Jupiter. Not a single bird was singing yet, not even the Western Wood-Pewees (they seem always the first ones up) or the Swainson's Thrushes (usually the second).

Time to get going. I staggered out of my chilly car and packed up my 3 days' of food, water, camping gear and radio gear into my big pack. I was wearing the same clothes I'd worn yesterday; I'd slept in them and I'd be wearing them for up to two more days.

I drove my car up a rubbly, craggly hill, got my pack on and hiked out the other side of the fence to meet Jamie near the bird. She was just finishing packing up her stuff. The woods around me started to say "Peeeer" over and over - Western Wood-Pewees. And few minutes later, the gorgeous fluting warble of the thrushes, one of most beautiful birdsongs of the northern woods. Bird after bird joined in; the sky began to lighten; Jamie and I chatted for a bit, and then suddenly - "HE'S MOVING!" said Jamie. "THERE HE GOES!" Jamie spun around with her antenna, waved it around till she found the direction with the loudest signal, and we charged off in that direction.

Through woods and up ridges and over deadfall and down ridges and up and up and up - we suddenly popped out onto the main National Park road and recognized where we were. "He's headed for Signal Mountain!" said Jamie, and we ran across the road and straight into the Signal Mountain woods.

Everyone had told us we'd never be able to follow crossbills. When Jamie met with the transmitter gurus in Germany, the people who have done more bird-tracking than anyone in the world, and told them she was going to try crossbills, "they laughed!" she said. ("Just wait till a few months from now!" I'd said. "They'll .... well, they'll probably still be laughing.") Crossbills are supposedly the most nomadic birds in the northern hemisphere. A single bird could zoom clear from Nova Scotia to British Columbia if the mood takes him. So Jamie and I had both been half-expecting our bird to arrow off into the sky like a feathery meteor, for parts unknown, leaving the entire Grand Tetons National Park in the dust behind him. But amazingly, our little bird was moving in little short hops, from tree to tree, almost casually - and we were actually able to follow him.

Let me rephrase that. Jamie was able to follow him. Jamie is a soccer-playing surfer girl, while I have more recently moved into the role of pudgy middle-aged professor who spends all her time sitting in cafes grading. Having tested myself several times in my human physiology lab, I knew I was in reasonable shape but not excellent shape. We were running straight up hill, tripping endlessly on rolling rocks and scrambling over huge fallen trees every couple of paces - carrying our fully-laden packs and all our radio gear and always with one arm in the air holding up the antenna. Jamie was zooming along in front of me like a woman possessed. I'd soon reached that level of desperate panting that I knew, from those physiology tests, meant I was at or exceeding my theoretical maximum heart rate - the point at which you will soon either pass out or have a heart attack. I was certain I was about keel over when Jamie stopped suddenly and turned to me and said "Wow, this is fun! Isn't it?"

And she was right. It really was fun. We were charging through the wild woods, off the path, in bear country, in the Tetons. We were actually following a crossbill!