Mobile, Alabama: Up in the wind on the Jubilee Parkway above the Mobile-Tensaw, looking down at the white pelicans and the whitecaps. Heading towards the aftermath of a record storm that dropped ice on Baton Rouge; snow in Houston; birds to the ground in the lower Rio Grande. I push into the headwind while the needle on my gas gauge dips lower, think of the songbirds whose fuel ran out: for me an inconvenience; for them a deadly blow.