Amidst the annual scarecrow display at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Bob White finds the dead body of Sonny Delite, a birding colleague well-known in the state for his conservation advocacy. Dismissed by the police as a suspect in the case, Bob turns his attention to unmasking the former celebrity wrestler who has joined the Savage High School faculty, but quickly regroups when the murder investigation comes home to roost at the high school. Determined to discover the identity of Sonny's killer, Bob's chase takes him to the proposed site of a wind farm, into the crosshairs of a World War II ordnance expert who shoots vegetables from his bazooka, to Alberta Marsh and its trove of rare birds, and into the girls' locker room at Savage High School to round up some egg-laying students.