Nikon Monarch November 8
I christen my new Nikon Monarch binoculars on the sea wall, and immediately I capture an osprey, Aguila Pescadora, staring me down from atop a distant pylon. He (or she) is dressed as a French pirate—blue-grey longcoat, white abdomen ruffled from ascot to gaiters, polished pointed boots, and, naturally, a feathered cap. Fish are jumping into thick air, one skipping for thirty feet across the water, like the Tonoc lizard, like Jesus himself. I know that at least one of the leapers is a snapper because the stalwart Japanese fisherman has landed him and placed the half-pounder in his plastic dinner bag. The osprey bows his head.
Small birds flit about—yellow-masked kiskadees and white-bearded manakins—while overhead a sharp formation of egrets heads home to the D’ego Martin estuary for the evening. A green kingfisher patrols the shoreline, wearing a cherrywood waistcoat. A brown pelican rests his weary load of a bill on a stranded chunk of gneiss. The precocious macaw provides shrieking commentary, in english, from almond treetops.
I scan the lush foothills behind Westmoorings and spot the sentinel cannons of Fort George, poised on the low stone walls in front of the wooden gauge house built by the exiled Ashanti king. Should those big guns ever again be employed, an easy target would be my apartment building, or perhaps the Harbour Masters fiesta Crucero. None of this discourages the 300 or so revelers on board the floating beer blast that launches nearby every dusk. The soca dance soundtrack can carry for a mile from the triple-decker death trap. Harbour Masters may advertise young ladies in bikinis, clean bathrooms, and “vybz“, but from this telescopic vantage it more resembles one of those refugee-packed African barges that periodically burn and sink in the Indian Ocean. The passengers raise their plastic cups and bottles and toast the lifeless tankers, as they cut through the line and cruise into sedated oblivion.
The hawksbill turtle has returned. He raises his head right in front of me and gazes expectantly with round weepy eyes. Someone has helped this guy out at least once in his long life. Meanwhile, I adjust my focus to study the algae lawn on his plated shell. With my Nikon Monarch in hand, the Japanese fisherman acknowledges me, for once. Perhaps he sees me suddenly as a fellow naturalist, rather than a merely a familiar voyeur. I do not dare point the binoculars at the apartment towers, lest he change his opinion.
The first star of the evening sits on the southern horizon. More constant than Polaris, it burns day and night, oxidizing the unused hydrocarbons from the petroleum refinery at Pointe a Pierre, way down sout’. Under cloud cover, the flame illuminates the faraway sky and denuded oil towers, like an encroaching western wildfire. Long queues of tankers fasten the hatches against a coming tempest. Distant rains dangle like indigo tentacles beneath a Portuguese Man o’ War, while the osprey holds his or her ground against the elements.