When we get to the area where cabbage palms form an oasis, it is clear that the whole area is in bad shape from the fires.  It would be unlikely that any oriole would continue to nest here.  “Did the Bahamas National Trust tell you what villages they thought they saw the orioles in?” I asked.

“No, and they didn’t get back to me, so we have no idea where these reports are coming from.”

We decided to switch gears.  Rather than looking for nests, we would try to find one of the people who thought they saw the oriole.  We made our way to Crossing Rock Settlement, a small village which, until a few years ago, was a bright fishing village which hung right over the beach.  A hurricane nearly vanquished the entire settlement, and so the villagers rebuilt a mile inland.

Here, we find a bar, where we ask to use a telephone.  The Doctor knows of a man living here who had some bird identification experience.  He thought it would be possible this would have been one of the witnesses. 

The bartender finds the number for the man.  His name is Israel, and, yes, he is available, and we would be welcome to come by his house, which is just a few blocks down from the bar.

We drive to the man’s house, and he invites us to his backyard.  The Doctor has a hardcover volume on the orioles of the New World in his hand.  He hands me a tape-recorder, and asks me to keep the tape playing.

“I saw him right here,” explains Israel, in that bush.  He points to a large bush growing in his backyard.

While I play the Bahama Oriole tape, the Doctor begins to interview Israel, by opening the book and pointing to various plates of orioles.  The plates do not have the names of the orioles on them, only numbers, and I can tell he is asking him about South American species’, birds which would never be found in the Bahamas.

The Doctor has a way of talking about naturalist ideas in an almost folksy tone, making complex ideas and questions easy to understand.  And with the same patience he offered me in our forays, he delicately asks Israel everything he can about the oriole.

Israel insists the oriole he saw was a deep yellow, almost an orange.  “Yes, but is it possible,” asked the Doctor, over the call of my tape, “that it was the morning light casting that shade on lemon yellow feathers, like this?” he said, pointing to another bird.

After fifteen minutes of questions, Israel had described the bird well enough that the Doctor concluded the man had seen an Orchard Oriole.  An Orchard Oriole would be rare enough in the Bahamas that anybody who saw one and knew something about birds would find it significant. 

I gave the Doctor a look that said, there’s our answer. There are no Bahama Orioles here.

The face he gives me back is, yes, these reports were all over an Orchard Oriole.
We thank Israel.  We shake hands, and on the way out, the Doctor says, “by the way, who did you report your finding to?”

Israel looks at us strangely, then says. “Nobody.  You two are the only ones who’ve talked to me about this.”

In the pickup, I say, “Up until that very last sentence, we thought we knew the witnesses were confused about which bird they were seeing, and that there is no Bahama Oriole on Abaco.  Now, we find out he wasn’t even one of the witnesses!”