The Reluctant Twitcher (17 page)

Rag of a man that I am, is this the end of me?

— O
DYSSEUS IN HOMER'S
T
HE
O
DYSSEY

O
N
N
OVEMBER 4, WHEN
I got Bohemian Waxwing as bird 295, I figured three hundred was a cakewalk. How could I miss? I even started telling people that I thought I was going to make it — just a matter of time. The gods, of course, were setting me up for the fall. Had I not heard of hubris? Humpty Dumpty syndrome? I should have known better. I've been a loser all my life. Why should I start to come through now? Had I done anything other than offer constant, often copious, libations each evening to gain favour with the bird god? I should have seen it coming.

I spend hours in the field day after day, but no new birds. It is a bleak and desperate November. Even the Internet is reporting few novelties and the ones it does post manage to avoid me no matter how soon I chase off after them. My sole comfort is that Margaret and Hugh are not racing ahead scoring right and left and leaving me struggling in their wake. This is another doldrums period. The whole province is quiet.

And I still can't find Pine Grosbeak. I've been missing them everywhere, while everyone else has been having really good luck with them. I get sick of crabapples and buckthorn; I check every one within miles of Cobourg. It is embarrassing. People are discussing and comparing all the Pines they are seeing; others are bored with Pines — too numerous.

Photo by
Sam Barone.

Pine Grosbeak (female). Guelph. Less gaudy than the male, to be sure,
but this female looked awfully good to me.

Eventually, I am the only person in the province who has failed to see one of these ubiquitous invaders, which as Ron Pittaway predicted, would be all over the place in goodly numbers. I'd all but counted the bird as a given. Imagine my horror when I understand it is going to be the Eurasian Wigeon all over again, but this time with a less felicitous outcome. The gods have lost patience with the Rewards for Hard Work Program and have reverted to their old ways. Screw Pope wherever possible without hurting other birders unduly. There is one other birder, a rookie junior field naturalist in Punkeydoodles Corners who has also failed to see Pine Grosbeak, but he has been ill. It is understandable. People are cutting him some slack.

Then, on November 20, Don Shanahan calls to say there is a flock of Pine Grosbeaks outside the Brighton Beer Store. I do not stop to ponder how Don might have come to find them. These things happen. Margaret (who has already seen one yesterday and knows from experience that loser Pope will never find one without her) and I are off in a flash. As we arrive, I see a flock of birds explode out of a nearby tree, gain height, and fly as if possessed for the horizon. I know they are Pine Grosbeaks, but I do not get my diagnostic look. A lesser man and one not so used to defeat and abject disappointment might have wept. I begin to stare above my head into dark, forbidding spruce trees. As I stand in the sad bleak silence thinking of Cato the Younger in the crepuscular gloom, Margaret says, “Oh, what was that?”

“What was what?” I ask, as I so often do around Margaret. She has heard some little cheep or tweet or something, maybe a distant Brown Creeper clearing its throat.

“There, that call,” says Margaret. “Isn't that Pine Grosbeak?”

“Right on,” I say, hearing nothing except the now-alluring creak of the Beer Store door. Then the fates play another trick on me. I think I hear a Greater Yellowlegs. It seems unlikely that this species hides in fir trees in the winter, but I know enough to start screening those fir trees madly. Right above us, hidden deep in the branches of a big spruce, we see the saffron rump and then the whole body of a beautiful female
Pine Grosbeak
(296), the most beautiful one of these unprepossessing birds I have ever seen.

Ticky, ticky.

17
299 and 300 — Sort Of

I am an ass.

— D
OGBERRY, IN
S
HAKESPEARE'S
M
UCH
A
DO ABOUT
N
OTHING
, A
CT
IV

S
OMEHOW, DURING THE DESPERATE
days between November 4 and November 20, when I was stuck at 295, I had somehow begun to factor in my heard-only birds and to start thinking I had 297. This would give me a much better chance of hitting three hundred. I mean, by ABA rules this was really my true number and this could save me from embarrassing failure. Though I would always know I was a true loser, other people would think I had made it. So, with Pine Grosbeak I was at 298; not a hopeless position like 296. Two more birds and I'm a winner ABA style and that will at least be something. Stop people from saying, “Yeah, poor bugger, he tried so hard. Raced all over the province and still couldn't do it. A loser, eh?”

On the evening of November 20, I note on Ontbirds that someone has found a Yellow-breasted Chat in the park at Ashbridge's Bay. Imagine! I long since gave up all hope for a chat after missing it for the first time in years at both Point Pelee and Pelee Island.

Nonetheless, plucky little devil, on the morning of November 21, in driving freezing rain, I head for Toronto alone to try for the chat in fullest comprehension of the certainty of defeat. The quicker after a posting, the better, regardless of the weather.

It was found in the extreme southwest part of the park. I repeat this to myself as a kind of mantra all the way to Ashbridge's Bay, get out of the car, don warm clothes and raingear, and set off almost at a run directly to the extreme southeast corner of the park, where I search for a full hour. Lots of good habitat — I even find the mentioned euonymus bush with red berries, though it is not exactly where the posting suggested — but no chat. But I am damned if I am going to give up. I stop to regroup and clarify my thoughts.

“What do I know?” I ask myself.

A voice says, “The bird is in the extreme southwest corner of the park.”

“Exactly,” I say.

“Then why are you in the extreme southeast corner, you fool,” the voice continues.

Hmm. An excellent question. It
is
mystifying and would break a lesser man. I rush over to the southwest corner, and find the red euonymus berries right where they should be, and search diligently for thirty minutes. Of course, in the freezing rain no one else appears to help. Just before giving up, I decide to give pishing a whirl and immediately hear a responsive chip right beside me, then another. I look madly about. It has to be the chat. What else in its right mind would be out here? Suddenly, perhaps divinely inspired, I glance up, and there, six metres over my head, feeding placidly in a Russian Olive, is Mr. Chat. The bird is in gorgeous plumage, just like at Pelee, and seemingly unaware of the freezing rain.
Yellow-breasted Chat
(297/299) is another sweet bird, a favourite at any time, but particularly so now — under the circumstances, absolutely thrilling.

Soaked to the hide and numb with cold, I stagger back to the car and head home. I stop only to phone Felicity to say I have found the chat, but will be very late for lunch. Almost before I speak, she says breathlessly, “Margaret has just phoned to say the Northern Gannet is back in Cobourg Harbour.”

Say no more. I have already missed this elusive bird several times. I run back to the car, floor it, and head for Cobourg, insouciantly passing the signs promising thousands of dollars of fines and jail time for all heavy speeders. I drive like the people who usually make me so mad, but this is, of course, completely different. I have just cause. I think about how easy it was for Felicity several days ago when Joan and Barbara came for lunch in my absence and they all went down to the harbour and watched a gannet swoop and dive and play silly buggers just off the pier. It was a challenge to seem pleased about that, I can tell you.

Photo
by Sam Barone.

Yellow-breasted Chat. Ashbridge's Bay, Toronto. On this sleety late
November day this bird does not look as cold as I was.

On the way to the harbour, racing along Albert Street, I see Margaret's car in her driveway. I stop in.

“Have you seen it?” asks Margaret. “I waited an hour keeping track of it but got too cold and I had to come home.”

She carefully describes where she last saw it — flying out into the lake, away from the feeding frenzy of mergs, loons, and gulls — and with no hope at all, I race to the harbour, run out on the headland, and get the scope going.

Loons, hundreds of bastardly loons, swarms of big dark first-winter Herring Gulls, and two thousand Red-breasted Mergs. How could one find the gannet in this mob? Then I remember it flew out from the frenzy into the lake. I make a sweep at low power and there it is, all by its lonesome, seemingly in lordly disdain of the feeding flock. I watch it for half an hour, fingers and eye freezing to my scope, before it flies right in before me and begins to dive and feed actively.
Northern Gannet
(298/300). A worthy fowl! Not like my hundredth bird my first time at Churchill which was a rare (in Churchill) House Sparrow.

By everyone else's rules this is my number three hundred. It
feels
like three hundred. Margaret and Felicity and I go out for dinner this night and a bottle or two dies. According to Felicity, Margaret and I talk almost the whole time about birds, though I personally doubt it.

Now I have to get number three hundred for Margaret. I feel bad being there first. I had somehow thought we would both get number three hundred simultaneously. And she helped so much near the end. And besides, I
really
need two more birds to accomplish what I set out to do according to my rules. I am still not where I want to be.

It will be! It will be!

18
299 and 300 — In Sooth

“
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy.