Birdsong

Menu displays a Bay Breasted Warbler from the banding shed at Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory. The Bay Breasted Warbler breeds in a narrow band around the Great Lakes region and winters in South America.

Its 10:30 Thursday night. The half moon and northern borealis hang low in the sky as the coarse Army Reserve Road unravels before our car headlights. Pamela Stagg is at the wheel. She brings the station wagon to a stop, lowers the window and shuts the engine. We sit and listen. The surrounding outback is dense with starlight, red cedar and silence. From the back seat Agneta Sand whispers something in her pronounced Swedish accent. Something from the pages of the bird book she holds in the darkness. The moment is mission-driven and the three of us are a team.

Pamela starts the car up again and takes it slow through the ruts of Point Petre out toward Soup Harbour. Five minutes lapse; we stop and repeat the process. Bird-spotting reconnaissance has told that the whippoorwill was heard in the area the night previous. “Maybe it was a ruse to steer us out here and waste time,” Pamela whispers.

Sitting in the front passenger seat with binoculars hanging from my neck I muse on how I really hadn’t given much thought to the wording of this adventure: Like the ‘athon’ part of ‘Birdathon’; or that ‘24 hours’ wasn’t just a figure of speech; and the competition part? As a novice, one more thing I hadn’t considered.

But I had signed up to be ‘guest birder’ for the annual Baillie Birdathon, the oldest sponsored bird count in North America that raises money for bird research and conservation. The challenge is to gather in teams and attempt to record the most number of bird species in the County within a short window of time. The event takes place throughout the country in May and the data is gathered by Bird Studies Canada. What I have gained so far is an appreciation for the concentrated following of those who are impassioned by birdsong.

Regretfully I missed the two-day ‘Boot Camp for Birders’ held weeks previous. Had I been able to attend I’d be better prepared for the task, I figure. On second thought maybe not so regretful: especially now I see the homework that goes with bird identification. I may have flunked the course! Imagine being invited to train for the Tour de France cycling race on a three speed vintage Raleigh bike? I exaggerate here. Maybe a five speed!

Our bird-spotting tour began at Gardenville earlier this same evening when we stood by the roadside scanning wetlands in the drowsy sundown of Weller’s Bay. Pamela peered through binoculars and then in a pronounced whisper: “Look!” as a large white crane-like bird landed downstream. “Its one of a pair of egrets,” she tells. “It’s why we came here! They’ll stand motionless for hours until they see a fish and then stab it,” she described. “They make a nest of loose twigs up in a tree. Biologists are now putting ‘nest-cams’ in to photographically monitor the development of the young.”

We were about to leave when Agneta drew attention to another section of marsh. “Trouble with bird photography is you need a $10,000 lens to get close enough,” Pamela softly said with eyes pressed to binoculars. “Over that way,” Agneta whispers while remaining glued to her own pair of spy glasses.

Bird bander Stéphane Menu releases a specimen after examination.

“In the days before good binoculars they used to shoot the birds in order to study them and gather their plumes,” Pamela continued in subdued voice. “It was a group of women in the early 1900s in New England that helped stop the practice by forming the Audubon Society,” she continued. “Shhh…over there!” murmured Agneta. “Wow! I see it! It’s a common yellow throat…” Pamela confirmed. “Its song is a…‘witchatee whichatee whichatee’… a very cute little bird with a black mask like a bandit and a yellow throat…but listen!” she beckoned. “To the sound in the background…’springgg of the yearrr’…Pamela sang harmoniously. “That’s the meadowlark…we are cued when we hear a certain song that tells of a species being present. We then wait to spot one to confirm the identity,” she said while surveying the marshland. “Now that’s one heck of a start to the Birdathon!”

Birding is about natural environment and habitat, food source, days of the seasons, winds and weather…time of day. It’s a basic understanding of the holistic integration of all things living. How we learn to bird ‘see’ is by sound. And so here tonight in remote Point Petre we do just that: listen in the dark ‘til faraway the clock in the Picton church tower rings midnight. While we might not be rewarded by the song of the owl or the whippoorwill I am personally rewarded with a mentoring on the art of listening.

“See you at the Point Edward Observatory at 8 a.m.,” Pamela reminds us as we part. I recognize that quiet British tone to be taken seriously. I am enlisted with her team and she has briefed us more in depth with a birdcall CD playing in the car while we drove: But do you think I can remember any of it? It’ll come with practice Pamela assures.

Dozens of bird types; egrets, bitterns, warblers, meadowlarks, swallows and waterfowl; those in the raptor family—vultures, hawks big and small—are all carefully noted on our list before 11 a.m. the next morning. I won’t mention whether I was on time arriving at Point Edward, but I will say this: as I wander alone through the zigzag of paths that follow through thickets of shag bark hickory, ash, fragrant sumac and where newborn phlox and columbine and trillium rest in the soft passages of forest light, it comes to me how this is Edenlike. I pass birders, many from countries afar who search the paths, whispering, pointing, focusing binoculars. The mood is one of child-like wonder; of chasing fireflies in night meadows or a contest of hide ‘n seek between feathered and human species. Yet it is more than that.

Beyond the four-storey cliff drop-off the waters of South Bay are glazed in a soft May day; across the way the tuft of Waupoos Island is moored to the shore of North Marysburgh. And beyond that, the edge of Adolphustown lays flat to the horizon. Merganser ducks, red-breasted and common, swim in the crystal bay below; all around, the place is alive. The surrendered silence, loud with birdsong, offers a listen ‘beyond ears’, a listen to the depths of being. Here in the borderlands of a vast unknown I am at home.

Our expanded team has rendezvoused by the gravel road; we have joined forces with Cheryl Anderson, Sarah Lowe and John Riley. After a snack and review of our list we ready to move on just as a young bald eagle is sighted.

Meadowlarks at Jackson’s Falls are mentioned next and we’re off in a convoy with a warning to expect sudden stops for sightings. And it happens! Along the way we see shorebirds in a creek; the solitary sandpiper, pectoral sandpiper, lesser yellowlegs, semipalmated sandpipers and least sandpipers that hold over to replenish before continuing on their migratory journey to breeding grounds in the Arctic.

The bird pursuit carries us throughout the County; the Millennium Trail and into Picton where nuthatches and tree swallows are spotted. Then a last leg out to Fry Road where we round out our list and reflect: “The shorebirds were special because they weren’t there when I scouted,” Pamela mentions. “The sight of that second-year bald eagle going into a dive was amazing—something I will never forget. Also hearing a rare clay-coloured sparrow at the end of the day was a gift,” she finishes. Our final bird count: 109 species within the time frame, all of them migrating passersby who stop to rest on our island in the lake.

The experience impacted on me. On Monday morning of the Victoria Day weekend I returned to the Point Edward Bird Observatory so that my seven year old and his close friends could witness this time of migration. While watching the observatory’s bander in charge, Dr. Stéphane Menu, gently go through the process of identifying, measuring and weighing various species caught in the nets, Menu allowed each child to hold in the flat of their hand a bird before it once again flew to the wild. When my son Luc’s turn came he was mesmerized by a yellowrumped warbler. The bird lay in the palm of his hand uncertain of when to move. A gentle blowing on its feathers and slight prodding finally set it in motion. I looked to Luc, his arm still outstretched: “Poppa,” he said, “I could feel its heart beating so fast…and that’s what I know.”

And so while my understanding of birding is more complete, binoculars and bird guide now a part of my kit, I will be riding on training wheels for a good long stretch. What I have come to know—better stated is what I have come to listen for—is the sound of the heartbeat. It’s all around.