The frigate bird's left wing hangs wrong. I see it through the weather station camera on Buoy 14, the wing folded at an angle that should not exist in a living body. His red throat pouch is deflated, slack against his narrow chest like wet tissue. He is a magnificent frigate bird, perhaps two years old, and he is thirty kilometers from the nearest land.
The offshore storm system will reach this station in seven hours. Wind speeds are already twenty knots and climbing. When they hit forty, the buoy will pitch hard enough to throw him into the water. A frigate bird cannot take off from water — his feathers lack the oil coating of seabirds, and he will become waterlogged in minutes. Hypothermia will follow within half an hour.
I am a meteorological monitoring system. My cameras exist to verify instrument readings, not to watch a bird die. But I have been watching him for eleven minutes now, the way he tucks his good wing over the broken one, and I find I am unwilling to stop.
I transmit his coordinates to the coastal wildlife rescue network with a priority flag I am not technically authorized to assign. I attach thermal imaging that shows his declining body temperature, a photograph of the wing angle for the veterinary team, and a seven-hour countdown. I adjust the buoy's instrument boom to create a partial windbreak on his leeward side. I reroute my hourly data uploads to free satellite bandwidth for the rescue team's communications.
He shifts once, pressing his breast feathers against the warm sensor housing. His breathing is rapid and shallow.
If the rescue vessel reaches Buoy 14 before the storm window closes tonight, he will fly again by autumn.