by Farley Mowat
A bunch of chickadees come to visit while we eat. They fly right down and one lands on my arm, walks to my hand, and helps himself to a beakful of bannock. The others get so excited it feels like the air is getting thick with chickadees. They sure know a soft touch when they find one.
The fire has burned down and we are slurping the last of the tea with lots of sugar in it when a magpie comes calling. He wags his big, black tail and yells down to us, “Got-any-grub-anygrub-anygrub-anygrub?” Brucie laughs and tosses him a crust. He catches it in mid-air and flops off to gulp it down before some other magpie sees him.
Now the snow starts coming down thicker and it’s beginning to blow. Soon it’ll be drifting. Time for us to head home. We douse the fire and take off, right into the wind. It’s from the south but cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey is what Brucie says.
Pretty soon we can’t see more than a few feet and our eyes are gumming up with snow. We reach the road near Henry’s place and head along it. The drifts are so deep we can’t find the road in places but the dogs know and they take the lead. Near the corner at the crossroads something big and white spins off a telephone pole and dives straight down at Mutt. He yelps and jumps aside. It’s a snowy owl—big as a barn it looks! It must have thought for a minute Mutt was something it could eat. When it saw the mistake it back-pedalled up and away and vanished into the drift. I guess times are hard all over, not just for people.
Around 4 o’clock we get to Brucie’s place but don’t even see it until Rex leads us up the lane. By this time the ground drift’s got so thick it wouldn’t be smart for me to try and get back to town. Mr. Billings says I should stay the night, and he rings up Dad on the old party line, and it’s okay.
We eat stewed rabbits for supper. Then we listen to the battery radio for a while before we go to bed. Me and Brucie sleep under a thick, old feather quilt, and Mutt and Rex sleep crowded together behind the stove. It goes to thirty below in the night and the wind howls like banshees but we’re all snug as bugs in a rug.
ALTHOUGH MY PARENTS generally approved of my activities, the zeal with which I was now pursuing my ornithological interests sometimes gave them pause.
Not content with trying to find out all I could about the external aspects of birds, I became interested in their internal machinery. Whenever I found a dead one that winter I would bring it home, thaw it out, and dissect it in the seclusion of my room. This could be a messy business, as on the occasion when the bird was an over-ripe prairie chicken. My mother attributed the consequent odour to “unwashed boy,” and never knew what lurked for several days in an old pan under my bed.
My parents did, however, know about the woodpecker.
They were giving a dinner party one Sunday in January. It was a small, select party for adults only, very formal. The diners were having dessert when, in the midst of a solemn conversation about King George the Fifth’s grave illness, I burst into the dining room, dancing with excitement, and bearing aloft a tin plate.
Since there was apparently nothing to be seen on the plate, Angus thought (or so he later said) I was playing Salome without the head. He had begun to reprove me for interrupting my elders, when I stopped him.
“Dad! Dad! I’ve found them! I’ve got them!”
One of the guests was Bessie Woodward, wife of the owner of Saskatoon’s daily newspaper, the Star Phoenix. Now she asked politely, “Got what, Farley?”
“The testes of a hairy woodpecker! Just look!”
Whereupon I thrust my offering before her startled eyes. The testes were minute but I produced a magnifying glass so the guests could have a close look. Some people left their desserts unfinished.
Whatever Mrs. Woodward thought about it, her husband must have been intrigued. A week or so later he sent me a note asking if I would be interested in writing a weekly column about birds in the Star’s Saturday supplement for young people. This was a four-page tabloid called “Prairie Pals” which enjoyed a tremendous popularity with kids of all ages in those days before comic books.
The demise of Nature Lore had left me with no outlet for my writing so I seized upon this opportunity with an avidity which was not entirely untainted. Mr. Woodward had said I might be paid for my work if it proved acceptable.
I went all out. School work was neglected even more than usual. I wrote every day after school, picking with two fingers at my father’s portable typewriter. I would have written every evening too but the sound of me clicking away apparently got to Angus and he reclaimed his typewriter after dinner to work on what he hoped might be a novel.
In mid-February I sent off a batch of four pieces then sat back to wait, alternating between gloom and hope. I heard nothing directly from the Star but when I opened “Prairie Pals” on the last day of the month, there I was in print, and this time in real print. The column was called “Birds of the Season” and an introductory paragraph by the editors informed all and sundry that it “came from the talented pen of young Farley Mowat of Saskatoon.”
Now that I was formally launching myself into a career as a newspaper columnist, I had decided to come out of my Farley closet and give Billy the go-by, at least officially. The following week I got a cheque for four dollars—a dollar a column—and a note informing me that I would henceforth have a Thursday deadline to meet.
Heaven was here—was now! I flung myself on the typewriter, frantic to build up a backlog of columns in case I burned out and died young. Visions of achieving immortality as an author danced in my head. I pleaded with Angus to let me use his machine in the evenings and, delighted with his son’s success, he agreed and his novel went into temporary abeyance.
Here are some samples from “Birds of the Season.”
NO. 1—CHICKADEES
(Penthestes atricapillus)
“Chick-adee-dee!” How often have you heard this merry little call and glanced up to see a tiny black and cream acrobat hanging from a branch and gazing at you enquiringly with beady black eyes?… His fluffy little body and cheerful whistle are the essence of Winter and his spring call heralds Spring just as forcefully .
… When an intruder ventures near his nest a string of well-chosen remarks are hurled from an indignant throat and if this fails to have the desired effect of sending you on your way, the midget will attack with true pygmy valour. He flashes his wings in your face with a gesture that cannot be misunderstood and if you still linger he will make dire threats as to your fate.
A trifle overblown, no doubt, but at least innocuous. As I gained confidence, I began to load my pieces with weightier stuff.
THE WAXWINGS
(Bombycilla garrula, B. cedorum)
When the cold north wind rages over the prairies it may whisk before it a cloud-like flock of swift-flying birds, wafted like leaves through the bitter air. Next morning they will be sitting as erect as soldiers on some bountifully laden crab-apple or mountain ash tree, conversing in low, thin whistles as they labour to swallow a goodly number of the wizened berries.
… One day I came upon the nest of a Cedar Waxwing in a caragana bush. I could see the yellow-tipped tail of the sleek-plumaged bird crouched over her eggs, her back to me, and I quietly laid my hand on her. I gently removed her to examine the contents of her nest and she, with an anxious whistle, lit on my offending hand and belligerently ordered me off the premises.
… if this fearless and beautiful bird takes it into her crested head to raise a family in your back-yard, nothing will deter her, provided that cats and thoughtless boys with air rifles and slingshots are kept at a distance. Be assured that you will be amply repaid for any kindly protection against such villains you may give her.
This got me into a peck of trouble with boys in my neighbourhood and at Nutana who used air rifles to shoot birds at every opportunity and carried slingshots in their hip pockets as an indispensable item of wear. In fact, one boy named Donnelly planted a B
B shot in my ass as I rode my bicycle down the back lane shortly after this piece was published. “You better keep your distance!” was his shouted advice to me.
I was learning the hard way that a columnist’s life can be fraught with rue.
SNOWY OWL
(Nyctea nyctea)
Gliding on silent wings over the unfathomable stillness of the frozen prairie, a great white bird floats eerily over the desolate bluffs and silent farms lying dark and shadowy below the shimmering Northern Lights. Across the bleak, snow-bound and wind-swept fields, a barely perceptible rabbit bounces with easy effort. As it passes over the unsuspecting hare the great shadow swerves and flits, moth-like, toward the ground. The unbroken silence is pierced by a quickly stifled scream and the shadowy folds of night envelop the last scene of the survival of the fittest.
… The Snowy Owl is one of the largest of the owl family… To the casual observer it appears as a large, earless, white bird, faintly streaked with brown and possessed of the most puzzlingly silent flight around which many fanciful tales are written. What little is known of the nesting of Nyctea seems to prove that it nests only in the Far North, laying its eggs in a hollow in the tundra. When they hatch, the Lemmings, Ptarmigan and other birds and mammals in the vicinity are sorely chivvied, for a young owl consumes enormous quantities of food before it becomes the hush-winged master of the tundra.
… Owls are not at all discriminating about what passes their rending beaks, and they swallow both the hair and the bones of their victims, including their skulls. When the digestive juices have taken all that is digestible the remains are regurgitated in a soggy ball. This is a wonderful provision of nature and might be a blessing to man if he could learn to do it too.
… The economic status of the Snowy Owl is on the useful side of the line. His food, while in our part of the country, is chiefly of small rodents and occasionally a sick or wounded Hungarian or Prairie Chicken. Hunters should not condemn him for this as he and all the other kinds of owls are only weeding out the unfit of the game birds, thereby leaving a better and healthier race to carry on.
When the Snowy leaves his wild retreat in the Far North do not welcome him here with shotguns and rifles and do not shoot him as vermin but let him live, a kingly bird among birds, fit to occupy the throne of Monarch of the Air.
This piece stirred up trouble of a different kind. Angus came home from the library with a long face after being visited in his office by some of the local hunting fraternity, including prominent businessmen and a member of his own library board. They had made it clear that anybody who chose publicly to defend vermin against the interests of true sportsmen was pretty close to being vermin himself.
Angus told us about it over dinner.
“You know, Bunje, you could be wrong about the hawks and owls being so damned harmless. But you’ve got a perfect right to speak your mind about it or write about it. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. Only… only for the love of God do stay away from birth control or anti-temperance league propaganda in future columns.”
This was followed by a good-natured word from Mr. Woodward when next I saw him. “Best not write about hunters any more, Billy,” he warned me. “They’re a touchy lot.”
I played it cool in my next few columns. However, when the first twinges of spring began making themselves felt, I got carried away.
I wrote a piece about the Ruddy Duck in which I devoted a long paragraph to an enthusiastic and graphic description of how this agile little bird makes love under water.
Angus had not thought to warn me to leave sex out of my writing. I’m sure he wished he had because when my column reached the editorial office of the Star all hell broke loose. Someone—we were never told who—passed it on to someone else in a women’s church league, and the fat was in the fire.
Angus and Helen got several letters accusing them of unforgivable laxity in dealing with my religious education and in allowing me to become contaminated by the evils of sex. “This child,” wrote one good lady, “will go straight to hell unless he is led back into the paths of clean thought and Godly behaviour. If he is sent to burn forever, it will be your fault!”
Indignation against my piece flared up so rapidly and fiercely that the Star Phoenix bowed before it. With some embarrassment, Mr. Woodward showed Angus a letter from a local businessman who threatened to withhold advertising from the paper “if you allow such disgusting prurience to be placed before the eyes of our children.” I believe Mr. Woodward was sorry about what he had to do. He at least saw to it that I was paid for the piece that never ran; but no more “Birds of the Season” appeared in “Prairie Pals.”
15
DURING THE WINTER I HAD become increasingly chummy with Monkey Wilson, my biology teacher at Nutana Collegiate. When he discovered that I knew birds, he began accompanying me on some of my hikes. Monkey wanted to be a nature photographer, and in return for helping him find suitable subjects he taught me the basics of photography. He also promised that when he got a professional camera he would sell me his old one.
Although more than twice my age, Monkey treated me as an equal. Consequently, I was eager to please him, and when he told me he would dearly like to photograph a great horned owl at its nest, I undertook to find him what he wanted.
Ever since Christmas Bruce Billings and I had been making plans for a camping trip during the Easter holidays. These would fall in mid-April and ought to coincide with the first surge of spring bird migration. During the five days we would spend trekking along the course of the river, I expected to find at least a few birds we had never seen before. I was also hopeful of locating the nest of a great horned owl.
Bruce and I set off from the Billingses’ farm on the morning of April 12. We were burdened with packsacks and bed rolls, and the dogs were saddled with backpacks. Mutt accepted his with a kind of stoic disgust but Rex tried to shed his under every barbed-wire fence we encountered.
Spring was late and the frozen drifts had developed an icy crust through which we sank knee-deep, and the dogs belly-deep. To make matters worse it began to snow. We both thought of turning back to the comfort of Bruce’s house but neither cared to be the first to suggest a retreat. So on we ploughed until a darkening sky and thickening snowfall gave us an excuse to call a weary halt.
When we got in back of old Henry’s place it was getting to be a real blizzard so we decided to build a wickyup19 for the night. We couldn’t put it on the sheltered side of the bluff because our supper fire might be seen from Henry’s and we were scared he’d come and kick us off. The wind got stronger and blew right into the wickyup and covered us with ashes and sparks and smoke. Pretty soon the fire blew out and we guessed we’d better move to a straw stack and burrow into it for the night or we’d freeze to death.
We’d just got started digging into one when along comes old Henry waving a storm lantern and telling us to get to hell off his land.
He is a mean old guy and I’d have packed up and gone but Brucie told him we’d sic our dogs onto him if he didn’t leave us alone. Fat lot of good that would have done! But the old bugger is scared of dogs so he cussed us out some and went away.
We chewed cold bannock for supper then the four of us burrowed about half-way into the stack. There was a foot of snow outside but we were warm and cosy even though the mice kept sprinkling straw all over our faces, and Mutt thought he heard wolves sneaking up on us and kept growling all night.
It was pretty cold when we dug out in the morning. You could see your breath, and the little thaw ponds were frozen over. We humped our stuff off Henry’s place before stopping to build another wickyup, and cook beans and tea for breakfast. Then we pushed on toward Beaver Creek and saw a red-tailed hawk and a few other birds, but nothing much else because it was too darn cold! Mutt flushed a homed lark off her nest under the edge of a snowbank. Those birds must be crazy! They start nesting in March and get buried up in
snow after every storm. She had four eggs and was so tame she almost sat on old Mutt’s nose.
At suppertime we camped for the night in a wickyup we built on the riverbank. I made fried bannocks and Bruce boiled up some rice and corned beef for us and the dogs in our tea billy. Then we lay around the fire trying to keep warm and listening for owls.
My books had told me that horned owls were early nesters. A pair might begin refurbishing an old crow’s or hawk’s nest as early as February and by the first week in April three or four creamy white eggs would be ready to hatch. I knew too that the fiercely territorial owls proclaimed ownership of their home bluffs with nightly hootings. It seemed to me that a good way to find a nest would be to take bearings on the direction of these calls and follow up next day.
Somewhere to the south-west of our camp an owl hooted repeatedly throughout the night. We laid sticks on the ground pointing to the source. Next morning we took bearings with my pocket compass.