Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir

by Lynn Thomson

  He sat on his bed with his books scattered around him and I lay on mine, reading My Name Is Mina by David Almond, a book for young teens about a girl who didn’t fit in. It was filled with different fonts: sometimes there were only two giant words on one page, for example. I loved that every time I was ready to turn the page, I had no idea what I would find on the other side.

  THE NEXT MORNING WE rose at 5:30, ate a quick breakfast, and were in the park by six. We drove behind a long line of cars straight to the information centre. The parking lot was already half full and I thought that we’d finally see the famous crowds of Point Pelee, people hiding in bushes and scowling at one another.

  We did see a lot of people milling around waiting for the shuttle to the tip, holding cups of coffee and their long-lens cameras. No one was scowling. In fact, what I sensed from this crowd was excitement and anticipation. These people, like us, were up early to do something they really wanted to do and it was a nice day, overcast but not raining. No one was talking on a cell phone, there were no laptops open anywhere, and no one was hiding in any bushes.

  Yeats and I headed off into the forest south of the information centre, having decided to go to the tip later. I was conscious of that moment of stepping into the woods and leaving everything else behind. That one instant when all the sounds of people, of traffic, of doors opening and closing, were suddenly gone, swallowed up by trees and ferns. It was like a curtain falling on a stage, and I waited for that moment every time. My heart opened just a little bit wider. I looked at Yeats and saw it on his face, too. We were alone in the forest now, just us and all those creatures, all those glorious trees.

  We saw eastern bluebirds, eastern towhees, great-crested flycatchers, and many different warblers. We kept walking and sighting, mentally ticking birds off every few minutes, hoping to see something new.

  The trail through the woods wound around and we wound slowly around with it, occasionally seeing another person ahead, turning the next corner. Around one bend we scared something out of the foliage. We followed very quietly and watched as it settled again, not far away. It was a male bobolink, a new bird for us.

  The breeding male bobolink is a distinctive bird. It’s the only American songbird that has a white back with black underparts. The back of its head is yellow and it’s a bit smaller than a robin. This bird migrates great distances every year, flying south of the equator and back again in the spring, a round trip of about 20,000 kilometres.

  This early-morning bobolink was wary of us and hopped back into deeper foliage as we watched it, so we left it to fatten itself up for the rest of its journey north.

  Around another bend the trail ran beside a shallow river, which was full of fallen logs and large stepping-stone rocks. I was wandering along happily, my brain unfocused, letting Yeats do the looking.

  All of a sudden, Yeats was jumping up and down, just like he used to do as a small, excited child. He was pointing at a little yellow bird that was also hopping, going from log to log in a boggy patch of the river.

  Yeats whispered, “Mom! It’s a prothonotary warbler! Look at it!”

  I gave it a good look because obviously this was a very special bird. Yeats was beside himself with emotion, literally hopping from foot to foot and making little squeaky noises.

  Another couple came slowly from the other direction. The woman saw the prothonotary and let out a little shriek. She, too, jumped up and down while her companion looked and nodded thoughtfully. They looked to be in their eighties and I heard her say, “I’ve never seen the prothonotary warbler, never!” with such excitement I thought she might cry.

  I was grinning and the woman’s friend was grinning too, but our two birdwatchers could barely contain themselves.

  This warbler had blue-grey wings and tail and a black beak and legs, but was otherwise a gorgeous bright yellow. (The name “prothonotary” comes from Roman Catholic clerics who used to wear yellow robes.) They are one of only two species of warbler that nest in cavities, preferably in swampy areas, and in winter they live in mangroves along the north coast of South America. They are listed as endangered in Canada because of habitat erosion, something I didn’t know when I was looking at this elusive bird. When I eventually learned about their endangered status and remembered the elation surrounding this sighting, I felt a stab of grief.

  We watched the bird for ages, side by side with this other couple, and then continued down the path. Not too much farther along, we saw five or six men who had set up their tripods on a bridge over the river. They sat on camp stools with their coffees beside them, waiting for the prothonotary.

  I tried to catch the eye of one of these men to tell him the bird they sought was slowly hopping its way towards them, but they all turned away from us and we stepped around them on the bridge. This was highly anti-social behaviour from all of us. I should have stopped and talked to them. They should have engaged in my effort to look at them. Surely they knew we’d seen the bird from all the energy coming off us? I said good morning and they barely mumbled, looking away. Never mind.

  We took a break from birding by going into the information centre to look at the notice board. Someone had put the location of the prothonotary as right at that little bridge. That was where it was yesterday and that was where it would be in about fifteen minutes, to be repeatedly photographed by a gaggle of seated men.

  Next, we took a trail that led north from the centre and right away we saw a white-eyed vireo. This was our third new bird! No one else was around to see it, but we’d seen it listed on the notice board, so we’d been hoping it would be there.

  The white-eyed vireo is a small songbird, a little bigger than a chickadee, and is mostly a dull mix of yellow, white, grey, and green. It has a bright white iris with a black eye ring. All other vireos have dark eyes.

  Not much later we saw our first northern parula, another kind of warbler. Since it was perched up high, we saw its white belly and yellow throat and breast with a necklace of black feathers splitting the yellow in two. It was beautiful.

  The parula nests in hanging moss, using Spanish moss in the southern part of its range and beard moss in the North. Not much more is known about its breeding habits, since it does a very good job of obscuring its nests.

  When I saw a new bird, one I’d only ever seen in the books before, I always felt a little thrill. It started in my belly and moved up through my chest and into my heart. Sometimes I didn’t pay enough attention to this feeling and really only felt it in my head, experienced it as something I should be feeling. But during those times when I was truly aware, I experienced this emotion as joy everywhere in my body.

  It was late morning by the time we took the shuttle to the tip, which was windy and crowded. The trees growing out there were less dense and had an unsubstantial feel to them, as though the lake might swallow the whole place up at any moment.

  We saw a guided tour partway down the beach. Everyone was clumped together and looking up at something in a tree. The bird flew down onto a log and we saw that it was a red-headed woodpecker, another excellent sighting of this striking bird.

  We walked past this happy group and out towards the very tip of mainland Canada. People were posing at the point while others snapped their photos. Waves crashed up on the beach and a few people posed in front of the signs warning of deadly undertows.

  Neither Yeats nor I had a crushing need to stand at the very tip, so we watched for a few minutes and then turned around and headed back north.

  We went straight back to the shuttle bus and then, once at our car, headed to the Homestead area of the park. It was hot by then and we were hungry, so we ate our picnic lunch and then wandered along a meadow path. No one else was about so we sat down at the side of the path and waited for birds to come. Pretty soon, I lay down and said, “Wake me if anything good comes.” The sun was hot, the air smelled of sweet grasses, and I was feeling tired after all our walking.

  “What do you mean by ‘good’?” Yeats asked.
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br />   “You know, something new.”

  “Or an owl? Or a hawk? Or maybe an indigo bunting?”

  “Yeah, something like that. I just want to rest a bit.”

  He let me lie there while he murmured bird names to himself as he spotted them in the field: yellow warbler, song sparrow, yellow-rumped warbler

  Then he said, “Time to sit up, Mom. There’s a new bird!” In fact, there were three new birds in quick succession: male bay-breasted warbler, male black-throated blue warbler, and Swainson’s thrush.

  The two warblers couldn’t have looked more different. The bay-breasted is covered in colours: black face, bay breast with russet throat and under-wings, a russet cap, and yellow patches where ears might be. Its wings are blackish with white tips. The black-throated blue is quite elegant looking with its deep blue feathers, white breast, and a bit of white under its wings. Its throat and face are black. The female of this species looks absolutely nothing like the male and for a long time, ornithologists took them for separate species. She is buffy-yellow underneath and olive grey on top. She was probably somewhere nearby, staying hidden, eating her bugs.

  The Swainson’s thrush looks a lot like other thrushes, with its lovely spotted chest and light brown back. The only real difference is its white eye ring and a slightly reddish tinge to its face.

  By the end of the day we had seen seventy-two different species, six of them brand new ones for our list. Spectacular. Yeats spent a lot of time that evening crouched over his list book, scribbling names and adding things up.

  AT 7:30 THE NEXT morning we checked out of our motel, loaded up the car, and drove fifteen minutes to Hillman Marsh, a conservation area very close to Point Pelee. It was pouring rain but never mind; I had rain gear and Yeats loved this weather.

  There was only one other car in the parking lot. Three people were walking slowly down the path towards the marsh, decked out in camouflage-coloured rain suits, rubber boots, and wide-brimmed hats. One of them was carrying a scope wrapped in plastic.

  I struggled into my rain pants in the front seat of the car and changed into my other pair of walking shoes, the ones without the air holes on top. I pulled on a peaked cap and covered it with the hood of my sweater and then the hood of my jacket. It would have to do. Yeats was wearing shorts, a hoodie over a T-shirt, and his one pair of running shoes. He really didn’t mind; if I bought him a rain jacket, he wouldn’t wear it. I’d long given up that fight.

  I remembered taking Yeats to BC when he was just nine months old. We’d stayed with my friend Alex and her family in Nanaimo. Alex’s four-year-old daughter, Breanna, had taken us on a hike that her daycare often did. It went from the school down to the beach and through a ravine of west coast rainforest.

  I’d hoisted Yeats onto my back in a carrier and the four of us had set out in a slight drizzle. A staircase of earthen steps had taken us down into the ravine where we were sheltered from the gentle rain, but by the time we were halfway into the forest, the rain had picked up and we were getting soaked.

  Alex said, “Lynn, look at Yeats.” She was laughing. I craned my neck around and saw that Yeats had tipped his face up and closed his eyes and was revelling in the rainfall.

  I said, “Hey Yeats, you’re getting all wet.” He opened his eyes and gave me a huge smile and then went back to his particular rapture, laughing as the rain hit his face.

  The next day Alex had to work, so Yeats and I went down to the waterfront promenade for a walk. It had begun to rain so I pulled out a plastic cover I’d bought for the stroller but had never used: BC seemed like a very good place to try it out. But as soon as I’d put it in place, Yeats fought it. He kicked at it and punched at it and started to scream.

  Huh, I thought. I’ve seen a hundred babies placidly sitting behind their plastic rain guards, so what’s with this? I took it off and he settled immediately, sticking his hands and face out from under the stroller hood to get them wet.

  I gave that cover away.

  Yeats was soaked through by the time we got to Hillman marsh, which took less than five minutes. The rain was pouring in sheets and had created huge mud puddles along the path. The three other people were huddled around their scope and barely looked up as we approached. They looked miserable and after about a minute, they packed up and went back to their vehicle.

  Yeats, meanwhile, had spotted a greater yellowlegs out in the marsh and was excitedly telling me to look through my binoculars. This was our first sighting of this species and a good augur for the day. Maybe. It didn’t always work out that way, of course. We could see a new bird right off the bat one day and not another new one for two months.

  The foot-high greater yellowlegs is a common breeder across most of boreal Canada and southern Alaska, but because it nests in swampy, mosquito-infested muskegs, it is the least studied of all our shorebirds. The one we saw at Hillman was on its spring migration, and we watched as it fed on the frogs and small fish that were swimming around its long yellow legs.

  While we were watching the greater yellowlegs we spotted some Forster’s terns and some adult male northern pintails, a few of each. We’d seen the terns before, but we’d never seen the pintail. Another new bird!

  The breeding male northern pintail is a gorgeous duck with a chocolate-brown head and a white throat, grey sides with a greenish tinge to its wing feathers, and, of course, a long, pointy tail. It is apparently elegant in flight, but we saw it swimming in the marsh, not too far from the tern.

  Yeats kept watching the birds and I consulted the map board, which said that the shorter loop around the marsh took about forty-five minutes while the longer one took a couple of hours. Given the weather, we decided to set off on the forty-five-minute walk.

  Three minutes later, patches of grass thinned to tussocks and then to sporadic tufts only along the edges of the path. One edge of the slippery path fell off into the marsh and since I was reluctant to test my balance, I followed Yeats’s example and just walked in the mud. Every time I lifted my foot, my shoe brought ten tonnes of earth up with it. I shook the foot to dislodge some mud and placed it down again, squelching as I went. It wasn’t long before I gave up and resigned myself to very muddy shoes as well as the workout required in hefting them.

  Pretty soon my socks were soaked. I longed for boots. An image of the muddy trenches in the Great War flitted through my mind, but I shook it off as disrespectful. I thought this was muddy? The rain pelted down and I longed for a warm room with a fireplace and a book to read. I wished for sunshine.

  But then I focused on Yeats walking ahead of me, steady and uncomplaining. He turned around and smiled at me, just a small, sweet smile of encouragement as though he’d read my mind.

  I wondered, When did this happen? When did our roles reverse so that now I am the encouraged rather than the ever-encouraging parent?

  Along this edge of the marsh was what appeared to be a nursery school of Canada geese. There were three adults and forty goslings, small and fluffy yellow, so cute. The young were trying to stay up on the edge to eat from the tufts of grass, but every time we got close, the adults made some secret sign and the youngsters rushed back into the water. They swam a ways, climbed out to eat again, and then repeated the process as we encroached once more.

  Finally, they’d had enough and decided to swim back in the direction we’d all come from, and we went on without them.

  We walked one whole side of the marsh without seeing any birds, but on the next length we saw a pair of killdeers, a couple of spotted sandpipers, and then one Wilson’s phalarope in lovely breeding plumage. The phalarope was another new species for us, so we stood in the pouring rain and watched as it stood in the pouring rain.

  Seeing these birds in ones and twos was a sobering experience. I’d always imagined birders standing in fields watching great flocks flying past, or being in a forest as hundreds of birds fed from tree to tree. For example, about the northern pintail, our ROM guide says, “Flocks may number several thousand individuals
during migration.” Why weren’t we getting that picture? Was it naïve of me or had the bird population been decimated to the point of near novelty? Or were these just solitary characters, like the ornery chipmunks we had at the lake? Those chipmunks were so grumpy I couldn’t imagine them living together to save their lives.

  I wondered — if we’d come to this marshy place two hundred years ago, would we have seen a thousand Wilson’s phalaropes? Perhaps it was stories of the now-extinct passenger pigeons that used to “blacken the sky” that caused me to expect to see large flocks, and I pondered this as we stood in the rain, two solitary humans.

  Back at the car, I took a T-shirt from the trunk to dry my feet and for Yeats to wipe the condensation off the rear window. The defrost was on the fritz. We were two happy drowned rats. Three new species and a very peaceful walk in the rain.

  As I was lacing up my dry shoes, a young couple drove up and parked next to us.

  The woman rolled down her window and said, “Did you see anything good? Is it worth all this rain?”

  “We saw a Wilson’s phalarope and a greater yellowlegs.”

  “Oh! A yellowlegs?”

  “Yes. But it’s really muddy . . .”

  But they weren’t listening anymore; their faces were shining. They were anticipating getting out there, mud or not.

  We drove home along the north shore of Lake Erie and stopped at a couple of provincial parks along the way. The rain was still pouring and it was extremely windy. We were the only people around. At every stop I pulled on my rain pants and soaking shoes, and we trudged along the lake and through wooded areas, hoping to see something. We never did.

  The only interesting stop was at Long Point, which is a sand spit that juts about forty kilometres from the north shore of Lake Erie, roughly 200 kilometres from Point Pelee. There used to be a life-sized diorama of Long Point at the ROM. You walked out along pine boards towards a painted scene that depicted the lake with a marsh in front. You stopped at a railing and looked down on stuffed bird and mammal specimens and out at this beautiful painted scene of a summer’s day in paradise. We went to see this exhibit every time we visited the museum, probably thirty times when Yeats was small. Come to think of it, this diorama was around the corner from the bird room — a large exhibit filled with taxidermy birds from all around the world. Yeats and I spent a lot of time there, marvelling at the tiny hummingbirds and the giant ostriches, and the birds’ multitude of colours and shapes.