The story belongs to Robert. These three small coincidences belong beside it.
The summer I began the book, a Rufous Hummingbird took over the yard — the smallest bird at the feeder and the only one that never acted like it. He spent the season taking runs at birds twice his size. I named him Bob and let him supervise.
Bob the Rufous, 2026. The close-up footage arrived late in the project, which feels appropriate for a bird that never waited to be invited.
Additional footage: Bob the Rufous 2 · Video Project 5
Video footage of Bob the Rufous is available in the online Author’s Note.
Robert was five-foot-five, a football player, and “THE BRAT” to his classmates. I think he would have appreciated the nerve.
Forty-odd years after Robert, I played the same two sports at St. Patrick’s: basketball and football. Later, I sailed from Halifax, up the St. Lawrence and through the Great Lakes to Hamilton — much of the water he had worked as a teenager. I do not make more of either coincidence than that. I just like that we shared a little ground and water.
— Brian