The Great Hearth's Warming Bird Count
"Uhm… Twilight?"
"Shush."
"I just have some—"
"Fluttershy, shush."
"—some concerns that I'd like to—"
"Cram it, Fluttershy!" Twilight spat, binoculars still all but welded to her face.
Fluttershy grit her teeth and pinned her ears against her head. "That wasn't very nice."
A stinging indictment of pure evil, very possibly the end of a friendship.
Twilight, however, was well past preserving friendships.
"I am trying to make out a call, and you're making it very hard to hear anything at all," Twilight explained haughtily.
"But Twilight—"
"Identification by call is allowed!" Twilight insisted, raising one didactic hoof. "Check the rules if you don't believe me!"
"I know the rules, Twilight. I wrote them."
"Shush!"
Fluttershy rolled her eyes and closed her mouth as Twilight cupped one hoof around her ear.
For a moment, all was quiet.
Fluttershy leaned forward, craning her neck for any whisper of a—
Chickadee-dee-dee
Twilight's face tightened in a visible grimace.
"I'm pretty sure that's a chick—"
"I know it's a chickadee!" Twilight dropped her binoculars and allowed them to fall against her chest. "C'mon. Let’s head to the bog."
Without waiting for confirmation, Twilight marched out of the brush and set off down the trail.
Fluttershy sighed, but trotted behind her at an even pace. "I hope you don't mind me saying, but this isn't a good color on you, Twilight," she said softly. "Especially since the bird count isn't meant to be competitive."
"Well, take up your concerns with Cheerilee."
Fluttershy blinked. "With… Cheerilee?"
"She's the one who turned this into a competition," Twilight continued. "All I said was I was planning on participating. She was the one who had to be all 'I bet you I'll see a rarer bird than you, Twilight.'"
Her Cheerilee voice was woefully off-base, though perhaps that was the point.
"So I asked her if she was a birder. Just to make conversation!" Twilight went on. "And she just went on and on about all her expeditions and her encyclopedic knowledge of calls and her ludicrously gigantic binoculars…"
Fee-bee!
Twilight went stiff.
Fee-b-b-bee!
"Twilight, that's a—"
"An Eastern Phoebe!"
"An angry Eastern Phoebe!"
"Well, tough!" Twilight hissed, darting into the bushes. "I'm angry, too!"
Fluttershy stood resolute in the center of the path.
After only a moment, Twilight ran screaming in the opposite direction, pursued by a pair of Phoebes dead-set on tearing her mane out one hair at a time.
“Fluttershy!” she cried. “Make them stop!”
Fluttershy heaved another exhausted sigh and whistled sweetly to the birds, who almost instantly abandoned their target to light gently on Fluttershy’s head.
While Twilight caught her breath, Fluttershy continued to hum tunelessly, until bidding the birds a gentle goodbye as they flew up into the canopy.
“Please stop terrorizing the wildlife, Twilight. Remember, this is a census, not a—”
“Can you do that for other birds?”
Fluttershy stared blankly at Twilight.
Twilight stared devilishly back.
Fluttershy gasped softly. “No! No, no, no, Twilight! I won’t help you cheat at the bird count!”
“I’m sorry, who is cheating?”
Twilight’s face flushed red from chin to horn as she whirled to face the new voice.
“Tsk.” Cheerilee shook her head. “Twilight, don’t tell me you’ve resorted to using Fluttershy’s special talent to help you find more exotic birds. That’s so disappointing!”
“Don’t use your teacher voice on me,” Twilight shot back, twice as biting. “I know that trick!”
Cheerilee only smirked. “I spotted an Eastern Screech this morning,” she said, striking her binoculars lovingly and… almost creepily. “From nearly five hundred yards.”
“Oh, big whoop! You can hear that screaming for miles!” Twilight argued. “I saw a belted—”
“Belted Kingfisher?” Cheerilee’s grin grew. “I saw three.”
Twilight’s face burned brighter. “Why you—”
Tee-tee-tew
The company shot to attention at the sound of a distant and beautiful whistling.
“Was that—”
“Stuff it!”
Tee-tee-tew
A pause.
The birders stood frozen, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
“N-now, girls,” Fluttershy said carefully. “I think we can all agree this has gotten a teensy bit out of hoof. Why don’t we all go see the—”
Tee-tee-tew
“Pine Grosbeak!” Twilight yelped before scrambling down the dirt path. “I call it!”
“You can’t call a bird!” Cheerilee argued, hot on her tail. “I heard it too!”
“First to see it, then!”
“You are on!”
“Girls!” Fluttershy called weakly after them. “Wait!”
Only a puff of dust remained.
Fluttershy huffed. “Fine. I wasn’t going to count their birds anyway,” she told nopony in particular.
“Pine Grosbeak—what a steal!” Cheerilee squealed. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell the girls in the birding club about this!”
“Oh, you wish!” Twilight yelled, oblivious to the birds which scattered at the sound. “I bet you Granny Smith sees a rarer bird than—”
Tee-tee-tew
The mares nearly collided as they turned sharply to follow the gentle sound.
Tee-tee-tewwwwhet-a-whet-a-whip-poor-will!
The girls skidded to a halt.
As they listened, the once-clear whistle of the elusive Pine Grosbeak devolved into the raspy cawing of a—
“You’re joking.”
“Mockingbird,” Twilight muttered with a deep revulsion.
As if summoned, the mockingbird flitted out onto a branch and continued cawing.
Not a care in the world.
“Well,” Cheerilee said. “I certainly feel mocked.”
Twilight turned away, ears pinned to her head. “That makes two of us.”
She stared down at the ground, tracing circles in the dirt, wondering if she should apologize.
Well… she should.
Probably.
Maybe.
How?
As Twilight fretted, she heard a noise. The light fluttering of wings.
As slowly as she could bear, Twilight looked up.
The Pine Grosbeak.
A beautiful specimen—delicate pink feathers, shiny black eyes, and a strong, sharp beak.
And Cheerilee was looking the other way.
She won.
Twilight closed her eyes, reveling silently in her victory.
But…
She reached out and poked Cheerilee with one rear hoof.
“Wh—”
Cheerilee turned. She gasped softly, and the bird flew off.
“I saw it first,” Twilight spluttered.
Cheerilee scoffed. “Fine," she muttered. "Race you to the next one?”
“Oh, it's on!”