Q. How come frigate birds are found in Montana?

A.     They are male frigate birds, the ones with the big red throat sacks that fill up like balloons during sexual arousal. Some of these birds become so excited, with such great expansive balloons, that they rise straight up, their wings pinned back, floating clear off from the whole Galapagos archipelago. They drift helplessly on upper wind currents all the way to places like Arvada, Montana, where the coolness of the jetstream produces gradual contraction and they waft gently down. A frigate bird was also in North Dakota once, where it was mistaken for a turkey with a goiter and sold to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.

Robin and Son

In one particular robin flock there was a female who was truly loyal and faithful to the mate she had picked years before. It was a sort of scandal to be so male-bonded in a group that was utterly liberal and would never show the slightest disapproval of normal social strayers from the nest. Not that she showed off in any manner but was, simply, devoted and content. And it had been the same for him in a prior mating, where his partner never once went off, until she died.

What did he have that kept his females so devoted? Don’t say sex because robins don’t delude themselves with unique details of capacity, any startling disparities in coital competence. They know about the general parity of masculine performance. One male is as strong or as brave as another, no special fame inherent. Was it exceptional good-looks? No. He had no extraordinary orange in his broad expanse of chest, no luminous crimson more luminous than the next. No, something else was involved in this robin’s hold on his steadfast, immovable mates.

No one in that flock ever learned his secret except his breast-bespeckled son when the fledgling took his turn to fly to other skies and be gone.