Wild Wings

When the boys go to school the following day, they are given an internet assignment to research castles. When their teacher, Mrs. Wicklow, leaves the room, Rob switches to the osprey migration tracking site to check on Iris. By the time Mrs. Wicklow returns, she finds the boys engaged in a chair race and insists on seeing how much progress they have made on their project. Rob quickly switches to another screen that displays Castillo de Loarre, a fortress in the Pyrenees. The teacher is pleased, but Rob tells his friends that the castle simply happens to be on Iris’s flight path. It was a random accident that their teacher saw it. Callum marvels at the flight path, but Rob is just grateful that Iris helped them get out of trouble with Mrs. Wicklow.

Iris continues southward toward Gibraltar, where Hamish once saw migrating birds waiting to cross the sea. Callum is far more worried about the Sahara Desert that lies ahead for Iris. There will be nowhere for her to fish for days at a time. Callum frets when he loses Iris’s signal. His father says, “[s]he’s a wild bird in a harsh environment. You know that. There’s nothing you can do to help her out there; she’s on her own.” (164). A day later, her signal returns, far inland from her planned route.

The narrative switches to Iris’s point of view as she waits out a sandstorm for an entire day and night. Then, she spends another day flying in search of familiar landmarks. At last, trees and a river appear.

Callum eagerly plots Iris’s progress for weeks until she ends her journey, after 39 days, in a mangrove swamp on the Gambia River near the Atlantic Coast. In October, Callum spends more time with his chums and doesn’t check on Iris for a few days. While out on a bike ride, Euan, Rob, and Callum run into Hamish. He informs them that Iris is missing: “She’s not moved position for three days. Her signal is coming from a mangrove swamp. She hasn’t made any flights to fish or find new roost sites. It doesn’t look good” (176). Callum reproaches himself for not checking on the osprey and feels guilty for not fulfilling his promise to Iona that he would keep Iris safe.

Callum tries talking his parents into making a trip to The Gambia, but they refuse. In desperation, he reaches out to as many local groups as he can find, from hotels to bird watchers to the government. Then, he waits tensely for replies.

The next afternoon, Euan and Rob come home with Callum to check his email. There is a response from a 10-year-old girl named Jeneba Kah, who is currently a hospital patient. Her “father is a fisherman who loves to see “kulanjango, or osprey as you call them, come home” (182). Jeneba says that she will ask her father and brother to search for the bird. The boys in Scotland are elated, and Callum replies with a brief note of thanks.

Callum gets a cold and spends five days recovering and fretting about the lack of promising news from Jeneba. She writes to say that her family has consulted the village wise man, the marabout. Although he has lost his eyesight, he uses his inner vision and is never wrong in his predictions. He has seen Iris in his dreams, so everyone is looking for her.

The narrative shifts to Iris’s point of view. She has spent the past five days in the mangrove swamp but hasn’t hunted for six. Her injured leg has become infected, and she grows ever weaker. When she attempts to dive for a fish, it is stolen from her by a fish eagle. Afterward, she retreats to the hollow trunk of a dead tree in the swamp; “[s]he closed her eyes and fell through endless darkness, deeper and deeper into a dreamless and fevered sleep” (194-95).

A day later, Callum is feeling well enough to help with the sheep herding chores. When he returns to the house, an email is waiting for him. It contains a picture of Iris–“tatty and dull” with a limp leg but alive (198).

The following day, Jeneba sends another photo and a lengthy email. Her young American doctor, Max, joined the search party. Iris was found right where the marabout said she would be. Max is feeding her mashed fish through a tube and has treated her infected leg with antibiotics. Jeneba also encloses a photo of herself, showing both her legs in casts. Rob speculates that a crocodile bit her, so he emails to ask about the nature of her injury.

Jeneba writes back to say that she was hit by a truck. She expresses an interest in learning about Scotland, so the boys go out to snap pictures of the farm, the eagle’s nest, and a plate of haggis. Jeneba’s last email of the day says that Max plans to release Iris the following morning. She is now strong enough to hunt for herself again. Jeneba’s casts are also supposed to come off the following day, so she promises to write with lots of good news.

Callum and his friends are disturbed when they don’t hear from Jeneba immediately. They can track Iris’s signal again, meaning that she has been released. After a week, Jeneba writes to say that her bones aren’t healing properly, and she is suffering from an infection. The doctor fears that he might need to amputate one of her legs. The marabout has had vision of her “walking high above the world across an ocean of white cloud” (214). Jeneba’s father interprets this to mean that his daughter may die. Even though Jeneba enclosed a photo showing Iris being released, Callum doesn’t feel elated. He’s now worried that he is about to lose his new friend.