Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir (15 page)

We also saw a
blue-grey gnatcatcher
and a
wood thrush
. Both of these birds were rooting around in a swampy area off the path and it took a great deal of time and patience for us to get a positive ID on them. The thrush, especially, seemed determined to elude us, but we had time to spare. We had nothing but time, really. When there was no rush and no schedule, time expanded, and I felt my heart expand, too. This day, this thrush, everything in that moment, was miraculous.

The blue-grey gnatcatcher is a tiny bird, ten to eleven centimetres in length, smaller than the wren. It is blue-grey all over, except for a white bit under its tail, which it constantly flicks to stir up insects. It is the only migratory gnatcatcher and is seldom seen; we were very happy to spot it here, where we could watch it undisturbed as it flitted from branch to branch.

The wood thrush was a big deal for Yeats. We saw hermit thrushes every spring in our back garden, but this was our first sighting of their cousin. In silhouette it looks like a scaled-down American robin, but its colouring is different: cinnamon back and brown-and-white spotted chest. It is far shyer than the robin and doesn’t winter over in southern Canada the way the robin does. Instead it flies to Central America and spends those cold months in tropical forests.

We took our time on the path, finding white-crowned sparrows,
mourning warblers
, and the ubiquitous chickadees, and by the time we got to the shore the wind had really picked up.

We stood on a deserted sand spit and looked through our binoculars at all the birds congregated at its tip. Right at the end were about a hundred gulls (ring-billed, herring,
great black-backed
) and between them and us were at least as many
black-bellied plovers
. This was a new species for us, so we were thrilled. Mixed among the plovers were other shorebirds and we spent a few happy minutes identifying
ruddy turnstones
,
semipalmated plovers
,
dunlins
, and short-billed dowitchers.

As we walked slowly down the spit, the plovers grew restless. They shifted slightly away from us and kept turning their heads until suddenly, as if at some hidden signal, they all took off into the sky. They split into two groups and flew as beautiful, synchronized flocks, turning and shining in the sun. They flew out over the water then turned and swooped and turned again, silver backs flashing, signalling.

This plover sky ballet — elegant, fast, spiral — made Yeats and I stand still, electrified. I felt my inner shadow lifting in one great rush as they flew. That shipwreck had shut me down and these plovers were beginning to open me up again, lightening my heart. For the thirty seconds of their magnificent flight, I was filled with joy; I felt it bursting from my belly.

I saw that joy on Yeats’s face too and once the birds landed on the sand again I whispered, “This whole weekend, every minute of it, was worth it just for that.”

He said — well, he didn’t say anything. He nodded and then raised his binoculars to look at the shorebirds once more.

I said, “Let’s wait and see if they do that again.”

WE LUNCHED IN OUR
room and decided to forsake the car for the afternoon, walking instead down the road next to the inn. As we left the porch, the first thing we saw was a
blue-headed vireo
. It was feeding in young trees next to our room and Yeats, of course, spotted it as soon as we stepped outside.

This bird is a small passerine with a blue-grey head and distinctive white wing bars on an olive background. It has obvious white spectacles about its eyes and is a common migrant, but this was the first time we’d seen it.

A road ran parallel to the lake next to the inn, a long, straight road completely devoid of cars or people. Large deciduous trees overhung this road, oak and chestnut, and possibly hickory trees, too, but we weren’t sure. The trees were full of gorgeous birds —
indigo buntings
and
rose-breasted grosbeaks
and all kinds of warblers — and smelled lush in a way I imagined the forests of South Carolina smelling. I wasn’t sure why, since I’d never been to South Carolina. It must have been the name “Carolinian” playing with my mind, or all those books I’d read set in the southern United States.

The greenery soon gave way to the Stone Road Alvar Reserve. An “alvar” is a limestone plain that can withstand extremes of drought and flood. The alvar on Pelee Island is the only one in Ontario and is home to more than fifty rare plant species, making it an important conservation area. Every fencepost had a
flycatcher
sitting on it, and we watched a
turkey vulture
pulling away at something in a field. We’d only ever seen these vultures high up in the sky, so we took some time to enjoy it on the ground, gazing through our binoculars as it ate its carrion lunch.

The road became a grassy path through scrubby bushes and the grass soon turned to swamp. We decided to go back, but I really wanted to sit by the lake for a while and rest. I surprised Yeats by suggesting we tramp through someone’s property down to the shore. I don’t think we’d ever trespassed before and I knew he was uncomfortable with it, but we went anyway. No one stopped us and we found the shore composed of large, flat stones. I flopped down and he did, too, though somewhat reluctantly.

“What will we say if someone comes out?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” I opened one eye and looked at him. “It really doesn’t matter.”

The stones were warm and smooth. The lake lapped against them and there was a warm breeze. Yeats spotted some huge fish swimming just off the edge of our resting place and seagulls flew by. It was very peaceful. I wanted to stay and maybe nap on this comfortable rock, but Yeats was restless and so after twenty minutes we walked on.

That night I read for far too long. I was reading Kathleen Winter’s new book,
Annabel.
It was so good that I read long after Yeats had fallen asleep and way past the time when I, too, should have been asleep, considering we had a very early start the next day. But sometimes reading comes first and it felt delicious to hunker down in bed with a compelling story.

THE NEXT MORNING WE
rose at
5
:
30
to watch the sunrise. We put on as many layers as we could and walked the one block to the beach. It was cold and pre-dawn grey, and we were the only people out.

“Where do you think it’s going to come up?” I asked.

“Maybe over there.” Yeats pointed in an easterly direction as I perched on a boulder.

“But where exactly?”

He gave me a look that said,
Not this game, I’m too tired
. But the truth was, we both enjoyed the early morning and had no trouble passing the time before sunrise in companionable contemplation.

Seagulls flew past, calling; a great blue heron flew past, silent, its long legs streaming out behind. We waited for the first orange gleam to break the lake’s horizon, eyes scanning the cloudless sky to find it. Grey turning to pink and blue.

“There it is,” Yeats said quietly, motioning roughly to where he’d pointed to before.

A tiny, flaming gem perched on the edge of the water and a second later it exploded into a dazzling orange light, growing bigger and bigger and, in less than a minute, it was the sun. I sighed in satisfaction at this perfectly ordinary start to another day on earth. Gratitude flooded me, tears welled up in my eyes, and for a split second I saw the same feeling mirrored on Yeats’s face.

He said, “Are we going to go birdwatching before breakfast?”

The inn didn’t serve breakfast until
7
:
30
, way late for us birders, and there was nowhere to buy a muffin and a cup of coffee. So we decided to check out the other end of the island, where the map indicated there was an old lighthouse.

Yeats referred to that place later as the “Creepy Blackbird Forest” because that’s exactly what it was. It was one of those places the forest has reclaimed after being domesticated. This forest was spindly and messy, overgrown with raspberry and blackberry canes, with sumac, and with straggly willows. While it could still be called a forest, because there were some large trees, it could also be considered a swamp since part of the ground had sunk. Someone had cut trails for birdwatchers, but these trails doubled back on themselves and we spent two hours walking in circles, every once in a while coming out to the lake and spotting the crumbly lighthouse on the point.

All the while, the trill of red-winged blackbirds, hundreds of them, accosted us. It was as though someone had stuffed these woods with mechanical red-winged blackbirds and wound them all up to sing continuously. It could drive a person mad.

It was a huge relief when the woods finally ejected us onto the road and we made our way back to the car. That was one place we’d never go again.

I WAS HAPPY FOR
my big breakfast — eggs, toast, fruit, and homemade banana bread — and a couple of cups of coffee. I knew I’d have to pee in the woods later on, and hoped that when I did, I wouldn’t have to wait too long to find a secluded spot. With luck, there wouldn’t be too many other people in the woods.

Yeats never had to pee; he could hold it all day if he had to. He said it was because of his long hair — not an obvious physiological symbiosis for most people. But when he was younger he’d had a couple of embarrassing episodes in men’s washrooms, where the other guys in there thought he was a girl. Nothing sinister, just comments along the line of, “This isn’t the ladies’.” Ever since, he’d refused to use public toilets, even at school, and so developed a strong bladder.

We got in the car and drove around the island, looking for places to bird-watch. We found an old graveyard surrounded by tall bushes, which seemed promising, so we parked and wandered around. We spent a few minutes reading headstones, silently reflecting on the lives of people long dead. People who lived in a very remote area.

Then Yeats saw a great crested flycatcher up in a tree and we switched gears back to birdwatching. This was my first good sighting of the species. It’s about twenty centimetres long, slim-looking, and has a yellow belly with a grey breast and olive back. When agitated, it lifts the large brown crest on top of its head, the same way a blue jay does. This one sat preening, letting us get a good, long look.

Then, in the tall bushes, warblers: yellow-rumped, yellow,
black-throated green
,
chestnut-sided
. These bushes, both to see and to hear, were
alive
with warblers, shimmering with them. I thought for perhaps the hundredth time that “warbler” was the perfect way to describe these birds that sing such musical songs, each species with its different tune and pitch. Yeats wrote down their names and I stood still in that bird-filled morning.

We drove around some more and stopped by a farmer’s field.
Killdeer
were scratching around for grubs. Yeats saw them right away but, as usual, it took my eyes longer to adjust. Killdeer blend right in with a fallow field and even though these were moving, I couldn’t see them — until suddenly I did. “Oh yeah, there they are!” The sharp thrill of seeing them reminded me of childhood happiness, gifts under the Christmas tree, perhaps, a kind of euphoria we adults manage to shut out most of the time. This is why I bird-watch, to recapture what it’s like to live in this moment, right now.

Pelee Island was a very sleepy place. There seemed to be exactly one shop — a small co-op with limited supplies: bottled water, pop, chips, candy. There was a restaurant at the winery and a few B&Bs. There were some burger spots and ice cream parlours, too, but they were shut for the season. I realized partway through our stay that I saw no one talking on cell phones. I asked Sandra, the woman who ran our inn, about that. She said the reception was spotty and besides, most people came to Pelee Island to get away from things like pesky cell phones.

Sandra told me that she came to Pelee the year before for a weekend with some girlfriends. She wasn’t a birder; she and her friends just needed some time off and thought Pelee Island looked out-of-the-way. During that weekend, she toured an inn that was for sale and fell in love with it (and the island). She bought the inn. She said she went home to her husband and children and said, “Guess what I did this weekend? I bought an inn! On Pelee Island!” I tried to imagine doing this myself and decided I must be awfully risk-averse.

The inn needed a lot of work and she was getting it done. Clearly she loved this place and this life. Her dream had always been to own a B&B and now she had it. I hoped part of her dream involved a certain amount of isolation.

Yeats loved the Wandering Pheasant Inn. He loved our huge room with the mismatched antique furniture and the creaky screened-in porch. I liked all the mismatched china in the breakfast room. Sandra was putting in a new deck around the main building, which would be lovely on hot summer days.

We drove down the main street and saw a museum with an
OPEN
sign out front. The museum had displays about the geology of Pelee, its flora and fauna, its birds and their migrations, as well as information about farming and fishing, the First Nations presence before European settlement, and the European settlers themselves. Someone had put a lot of effort into this little museum and we spent an hour or so wandering around it.

We listened to a man tell the museum attendant that he lost all his honeybees over the winter and would have to start afresh. He said there were no more honeybees on Pelee at all, a grim state of affairs. The attendant was wearing a Nature Conservancy of Canada shirt and I asked him about his affiliation with the organization. He was a member, being a serious birder. He told me about the events they had there with authors and birders, and had I ever heard of Graeme Gibson? I told him I was a bookseller and yes, I knew Graeme and I knew his books.
The Bedside
Book of Birds
is a rare treat of a book, a work of art and a meditation on life in the wild. A bookseller’s life follows her everywhere.