by Lynn Thomson
Yeats was standing behind me and said, “Yes! There it is!”
I did as the woman suggested. There were five or six warblers acting crazy, repeatedly flying right at the tree and then swerving sharply away. They obviously wanted the owl gone. I found it through the binoculars quite easily once I knew where to look.
I’d seen these small owls while kayaking around Fairylands, and one night there were two of them on our island — but I could see them only in silhouette, high in the pines.
This was a clear sighting. This owl was less than half the size of the great horned. It had tucked itself into a V in the tree and blended right in, colours exact. None of these people would have seen it if it hadn’t been for the aggravated warblers.
I offered Ben my binoculars but he shrugged them off as usual. He found them awkward with his glasses. He didn’t seem to have the same need as we did to see every single bird.
We kept walking and followed a path that took us alongside some canals that led out to the lake. We sat on a bench on a flat little bridge over one of these canals and watched a beaver swim towards us and right under the bridge. The canal stretched as far as we could see, woodland thick on either side like walls, birdsong the only sound. We could have been the last three people on Earth.
We found a segment of road in the forest. It bisected a trail and had been left to tell a story. There were benches and some information boards, some with flora and fauna, others with old photographs of the road. This road used to stretch from farm to farm. This whole area, now a forest, was farmland. Most of the road, as well as the farms and all the buildings, had been dismantled and taken away. Nature, and nature tourism, had claimed it.
While we sat and rested on the benches, we saw a northern parula, a black-throated blue warbler, a blue-grey gnatcatcher, and an eastern towhee — all birds we’d seen before. We waited a while longer to see if anything else would come and then set out again. As we were winding our way back to the car, Ben spotted something racing across the forest floor.
“Look! What is it? A mink?” It was a small, brown mammal, very low to the ground and running like heck. In its mouth flopped a dead rabbit.
Yeats said, “Yes, I think it’s a mink. Look at it go!” The animal zigged and zagged, running back and forth across a creek, dragging its prey, which was just about as big as it was. Finally, it made a dash in a straight line and dived into an old tree stump.
“That was fantastic,” Ben said. “Just as exciting as seeing birds.”
In all, we saw about sixty-eight species of birds that day. We were happy with that, but decided to drive back to the boardwalk at the Blue Heron area to see the black terns again. Maybe we’d see something else. We’d given up on seeing as many as we had the year before.
We parked at the Blue Heron area again and Yeats went into the woods first, as usual. Not five steps from the car he said, “Look! A snake!”
He gestured up with his eyes, and then raised his binoculars. Ben and I looked up to the top of a dead tree where a very large snake was slithering slowly into a hole. And then it was gone.
“It’s a fox snake,” said Yeats. “That was great!” Then he bounded down the path.
Ben looked at me and said, “How did he see that?”
I smiled. “He’s good.”
Ben shook his head. “If we’d been ten seconds later, we would have missed it. That was amazing!”
I think that snake was the highlight of Ben’s day. It was an eastern fox snake, the second-largest snake in Ontario (after the eastern rat snake). The eastern fox snake usually grows to about one metre long. We didn’t know how long this one was since we didn’t see it enter the tree, but we saw over half a metre disappear into that hole, which made it the biggest wild snake I’d ever seen. The eastern fox snake is listed as “threatened” both in Ontario and nationally. It is a protected species.
We saw the black terns again, only two of them, sweeping and swooping over the marsh. We walked out onto the boardwalk and no matter how far we went, those terns stayed a good distance away. We saw another fox snake, about half the girth of the first. This one was slowly uncoiling and slithering into the reeds, off to find dinner. We saw three different kinds of turtles, and Yeats was sorry he didn’t have our reptile and amphibian book because we could only identify one for sure, the painted turtle. He jotted down notes so he could look up the others later.
I said, “Would this be a good reason to get an iPhone or some other internet device?”
Yeats glared at me even though he knew I was kidding. If he wrote down the description, made mental notes, and spent half an hour sorting out which turtles we saw, he’d remember them forever. The next time, he’d know which turtle it was. If he looked them up on the Internet, he wouldn’t remember them and he’d always be dependent on the device. Some people might say, “But he’d always have the device so why does it matter?” But having the knowledge is always better than having the ability to look it up. Or is it the same?
For people like Yeats, who have steel-trap memories, it’s not the same at all.
THAT NIGHT BEN AND I went out for a nice Italian dinner, while Yeats stayed in to update his lists. We usually ate food we brought from home on our birding jaunts, so this was a treat. I had a glass of wine, also something I never usually did when birding.
I thanked Ben for bringing us down here. He reached across the table for my hand and said, “I love you, Lynn. Thanks for letting me come.”
We smiled inanely at one another for a while. Then we started talking about our usual subject: the bookstore. We had a couple of great events coming up and Ben wanted to know if I’d work them.
We had Andrew Motion, who used to be the poet laureate of the UK, coming for a special dinner event.
Ben said, “It’s for his novel, but everyone coming to the dinner is a poetry fan. I think we’re all hoping he’ll recite something.”
“Aren’t we lucky to be in a business filled with poetry lovers? People who aren’t afraid to say they read poetry?” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be at that one. And the May Brunch, of course, but I thought the kids were doing most of the events coming up.” Ben hosts a monthly “Authors’ Brunch” event and has done so since his days at Nicholas Hoare bookstore.
“There are so many of them,” Ben sighed. “I have Yeats on a lot. He says he wants to work mostly nights, so that’s what he’s getting. Rupert is working a lot of nights, too.”
“Yeah, Yeats wants to bird-watch during the day, for the migration,” I said. “Some mornings all he has to do is lie in bed and watch the tree outside his window. The other morning he counted thirty species in that tree. Not all at once, obviously.”
Ben and I laughed. He said, “Rupert’s taking that philosophy course in June and then he’s off to England in August, and Titus is taking a full course load all summer long. At least Danielle will work. She wants as many shifts as she can get.” Rupert had decided to take a Shakespeare course at Oxford, an intensive program that allowed him to get a full credit for one month of classes. He’d go to London and see a play at the Globe Theatre, he’d hang out in libraries and pubs that were hundreds of years old, and he’d meet some new people, too. I was pleased that Rupert was stepping outside his usual circle, getting out of town on his own.
“It’s so great having Danielle back. She’s a star,” I said.
We didn’t have to worry about Danielle — she seemed to be grounded and hardworking and managed to stay cheerful on top of that. The boys were always less sure of their next steps and seemed more conflicted. Sometimes I felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for the boys to . . . what? Be satisfied? Settled? There was no such thing as “settled” as far as I could see. You couldn’t predict what would throw you off your path or when. And who was I to demand something of these young men that I pushed back against myself? I still didn’t have a vision of myself ten years from now. I really only had now.
THE NEXT DAY WE took our own multi-grain bagels
down to the breakfast room to toast and then covered them in almond butter, which we’d also brought with us.
Like the year before, we decided to spend Sunday at Hillman’s Marsh in the morning and then the rest of the day driving home. Also like last year, there were very few people at the marsh and most of them had congregated at the side closest to the parking lot. They had scopes, which allowed them to see birds from quite a distance. We needed to get closer to the birds, so we walked.
The day was bright but gusty. There was less marsh this year, probably due to the lack of rain we’d experienced that spring, combined with a dearth of snow all winter. Still, there were loads of birds out there: flocks of dunlins and short-billed dowitchers, blue-winged teals and black-bellied plovers. We also saw a green-winged teal for the first time, and a common moor hen.
The green-winged teal is a small duck with distinct colour patterns — iridescent green patches on the wings and a white stripe down the front and, for the males, a green-and-reddish head.
The common moor hen was skulking in some low shrubbery growing along the edge of the marsh. We’d seen something moving in there and we followed it for a couple of minutes. We stood still and then we tried moving quickly, but it stayed in the shrubs. Finally it showed itself and we were rewarded with a new bird. I recognized it immediately from the old bird book, unlike most of the passerines, which are just too similar for me to be able to differentiate between the species. This one was an adult breeding male, with its brilliant red face-shield. That made three brand new birds within five minutes of being at Hillman’s Marsh, and our shoes weren’t one bit muddy.
As we continued around the marsh we saw various warblers and sparrows and then, finally, we saw and heard one of those twin-like flycatchers. Yeats made a positive ID: it was a willow flycatcher. He seemed a bit nonchalant about this sighting, after two years of failing to do it.
He shrugged and said, “I knew I’d get one eventually.” My Zen son.
We walked a bit farther along the eastern end of the pond and stopped when we saw a flock flying in the distance. The birds were way up high but coming closer.
Yeats and I raised our binoculars and when they were nearly overhead he said, “Bonaparte’s gulls.”
There were perhaps two hundred of them, flying in a couple of separate groups. They dropped in altitude and began to circle. They flew around and around in a great, giant circle in the sky, white wings flapping, calls of kew kew coming from the flock. We guessed they were feeding up there, and before we had time to wonder aloud at this particular winged waltz, they finished and resumed flying north.
The three of us looked at each other, mirroring one another’s awe. Nature was full of split seconds like this, and you needed to be observant to see them.
We felt fuller now, as we walked the rest of the way around the marsh. I certainly did and I could see it on the faces of Ben and Yeats. We were glowing with the circling of those gulls.
Gulls are notoriously difficult to identify. In southern Ontario we have mostly ring-billed and herring gulls. The Sibley guide says of the herring gull: “Variation in its size, structure, and plumage can create confusion with almost every other large gull species.” Also, the gulls are famous for inter-breeding, creating hybrid individuals which themselves breed, creating still new hybrids. The smaller gulls are easier to identify, if you know which ones come to your area, but even with those ones, I wouldn’t bet my money.
Those had definitely been Bonaparte’s gulls, though — they were small and white and had that telltale black head they have in breeding season. There are other small, hooded gulls but of the ones that are mostly white, none come through Pelee, unless they are really off their course. A whole flock wouldn’t be off its course. These ones we’d seen were headed off to Northern Ontario to breed and then, in the fall, they’d fly back to the Gulf of Mexico to winter.
Even though it wasn’t teeming with rain this year, the wind gusts hadn’t let up, and we decided to walk only the short route again. By the time we arrived back at the trailhead, people were approaching and heading off in the direction of the other section of the marsh, which probably had about a thousand birds waiting to be seen. We decided to leave that one for next year since it was already noon and we had a long drive ahead. We were wind-blown and tired from the relentless gale.
Yeats said, “Can we stand in the blind for a few minutes? Maybe something will come.”
Ben and I grunted our assent and Yeats stepped up his pace.
But we didn’t have to go as far as the blind. A small flock of dunlin appeared, flying wide circles low to the water. They glinted like jewels as they turned in the sun.
The dunlin is a medium-sized sandpiper with a reddish back and long, drooping bill. It breeds in wet, coastal tundra; these ones were probably on their way to Hudson’s Bay to nest.
Ben and I were standing together, me leaning against his chest, and Yeats was about three metres away. We were on a grassy laneway between two expanses of marsh, with the wind howling and our hands freezing in our pockets.
Then, it happened in a flash — a flash of birdwing and light, a flash of breath sharply inhaled, a flash of grace. The dunlin had swooped out across the pond and then, seconds later, flown straight towards us. But before they collided with these three people standing still holding their breath, they flew between us. I looked at Yeats and then at Ben, and we all slowly exhaled.
I imagined that I felt the birds fly past us, felt the small rush of air and the pulse of their wings, but I know I didn’t. It had happened too quickly to feel any such sensation. What I felt was this tremendous sense of belonging; that I belonged with these people and on this earth.
None of us spoke for a few seconds and then Ben said, “Holy mackerel! That was unbelievable! They were close enough to touch.”
Yeats and I nodded. Yeats turned around and started walking back to the road.
He said over his shoulder, “We don’t need to go to the blind anymore.”
He was right.
I said to Ben, “Thanks for coming with us this weekend. Thanks for wanting to come.”
“Thanks for having me. Happy Mother’s Day.”
He put his arm around me and we walked like that for a while, watching Yeats stride ahead, his long hair flying in the wind.
FOURTEEN
I WAS WAITING FOR Ben in the car, facing south on Bay Street in front of the store, a Saturday night in May. He was exchanging one set of books for another, unpacking the trunk and filling it up.
We’d spent the day selling books at a symposium on health in the developing world and I was feeling depressed. The problems seemed insurmountable — war, famine, drought. What depressed me even more, though, was our unwitting complicity. A lot of money from our Canada Pension Plan fund to the Teachers’ pension plans of every province invested in the manufacture of small arms which made their way to conflicts worldwide and whose sole purpose, let’s face it, was to kill people.
And then there was the mining of those rare minerals, such as coltan, that we needed to run our computers, cell phones, and video game consoles, to make them faster and faster — mining that came with violence and rape. Someone had done the research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and when they’d laid the map of incidents of violent rape over the map of mining activity, the two corresponded. Seventy percent of the world’s mining companies had their headquarters in Canada, including many of those in the DRC.
So I sat thinking about these things and the pit in my stomach got a little bit bigger.
Just then a gull flew down between the buildings, going west along Adelaide Street and looping around in front of the car to fly up and east again, dipping its wings at me.
Not many birds down here, I thought. Saturday night, lots of traffic and city noise. Not many birds, but one seagull, trying to tell me to get on with my life.
YEATS WAS NEARLY NINETEEN now, in his first year of university, and mostly wanted to bird-watch on his o
wn. I offered to go with him to Riverdale Farm, but he gently told me he’d rather go alone.
He looked sad and said, “Sorry, Mom. Riverdale Farm is special to me. I like being alone there.” He saw by my face, which I was trying hard to control, that that was not enough of an explanation. He said, “I talk too much when I’m with you.”
“We don’t have to talk,” I said, but he shook his head.
“I want to talk with you. I just want to be alone at the farm. Sorry.”
By now I’d arranged my face into a smile and I shrugged, assuring him it was okay and that maybe we’d go to the farm together some other day. Though right then they had baby goats, and I would have liked to see them. Preferably not by myself, I thought, but I didn’t say that out loud. I was glad that he was independent and I was glad he still lived at home. I knew we’d go birdwatching together again and this thing about the farm was small. Just a momentary heartache that would dissipate as soon as I’d written it down.
Parenting is full of heartaches, some fleeting and some leaving permanent scars.
I had a million memories of being at the farm with Yeats as a youngster and they coalesced into a warm spot deep inside, that same place accessed by the smell of decaying leaves in autumn or the sound of Cat Stevens’s “Tea for the Tillerman.” I wanted it to go on and on forever, but I knew it couldn’t.
One day our final time of birdwatching together will come, but of course we won’t know it’s the last one. If I thought about that for much longer, I’d be in tears, so I took a long look at that darkness and at my nostalgia, took a deep breath, and let it go.
Sometimes when Yeats went birdwatching alone he had a sadness about him when he set out and I wondered if it was because he was on his own. If he’d rather have a companion, maybe someone who wasn’t his mother. A girlfriend. Maybe he’d like to have a girlfriend. But I thought that was just my projecting. I didn’t think it was sadness, really. I thought it was just that moment of transition between being in the house where everything was safe and known, and being out in the world where life is unpredictable. He was never the kind of kid who rushed out, seeking the dangerous edge.