Bailey Aldrich has catalogued four hundred and twelve bird species across three continents. He has identified a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker by call alone, in the dark, during a thunderstorm. He has spent eleven hours in a marshland hide on cold tea and one granola bar and called it a fine afternoon.
He is not, as a rule, flustered by anything.
He is, however, currently hiding behind a potted fern using two thousand dollars' worth of Austrian optics to watch his next-door neighbour.
Justin Miller has lived next door for eleven years. He is objectively, taxonomically, insufferably difficult to classify - too kind for the simple categories, too attentive for someone who is supposed to have moved on, and entirely too present in Bailey's field notes for a person who is meant to be a neighbour and nothing more.
Bailey is a scientist. Scientists observe. They document. They maintain distance.
They do not fall in love with their subjects.
(Probably.)
The Birdwatcher's Guide to Justin is a story about the gap between seeing clearly and understanding what you see - and the considerable amount of scientific self-deception required to pretend the data isn't pointing exactly where you think it is.
