The Reluctant Twitcher (19 page)

We hit the Burlington lakefront, but spot no King Eider, male or female. “Batting fifty-fifty,” says Hugh. “That's not too bad. Let's head straight to Fort Erie and knock off the Black-headed Gull. Then we can pick up Purple Sand at the Falls and probably Little Gull, as well, though if we miss it there we can always get it at Adam Beck or Queenston. Could get a Black-headed Gull there, too, you know.” Why Jeremiah has suddenly become such an optimist, I don't know. But I have noticed that the farther away we are from any bird, the more certain Hugh is we will see it. It is only as we approach the area that he begins to realize that the chances of success are nugatory.

When we reach Fort Erie, the Black-headed Gull is, of course, nowhere to be found, though, as always, we meet people who had it right under their feet yesterday and the day before that. One guy keeps saying this is a hard bird to miss. I do not suggest that he shut his cakehole before I do it for him. Fortunately, I am unarmed. This is the second time I have missed this bird. I do not know that I shall miss it again with Margaret and yet again with Hugh. They were “garbage birds” in England when I was there in January.

Daunted, but not yet completely broken, Hugh says, “Okay, let's go for Purple Sand.” I see the beginning of dark depression hovering in the wings.

To pick up his spirits, I suggest we hit Tim Hortons at Chippewa to get the sandwich and soup combo, a doughnut, and coffee. The
Reisefuehrer
's countenance brightens instantly. I know the soup and sandwich combo is his favourite lunch in the whole world. I learned that once when I proposed dropping into an exquisite little bakery café with lovely sandwiches and espresso coffee.

Hugh was mystified. “But there's a Tim Hortons just up ahead,” he said in disbelief.

“Oh, well, say no more,” I replied.

In post-Hortonic euphoria, sadly destined to be short-lived, Hugh says, “Let's go get that Purple. I know right where it's going to be on the rocks.” The double Boston cream sometimes does this to him. You know, and I know, the bird is not going to be there, but you have to go and look.

It's not there. Nor do we find Little Gull. The
Reisefuehrer
is devastated. He feels betrayed, especially by the Little Gull. When it comes to optimism, the distance between the apogee and the nadir is scant with Hugh. “If we miss Little at Queenston, we'll have to do the flyby,” he says sadly.

“No problem,” I say.

We miss Little Gull at Queenston. It is cold and wet and late when we arrive at Niagara-on-the-Lake for the flyby. Significantly, there is no one else there and we tough it out till dark. Not even very many Bonaparte's go by. “The word must have got out we were coming,” says Hugh bitterly. I have to take him into another Tim Hortons on the way home or I won't feel right leaving him alone later. Hugh does not get a single new bird today. “That's it for my three hundred,” he says sadly. I feel guilty about the Hawk Owl and play it down. Just a lousy old Hawk Owl, even if it was 301.

Almost two weeks later I am still at 301. It is harder to motivate myself and little of interest is turning up on Ontbirds, except, of course, that damn Black-headed Gull. Then the King Eiders begin to show up again and Hugh and I are off. It's Mr. Toad all over again. Hugh thinks we have a pretty good chance of finally connecting with the gull and maybe even the eider. Or at least he does until Burlington. As we draw near Gray Road, he says, “Not much chance, really. The wind's wrong, the light's no good, and there are no other birders around.” We try and fail.

We go to Sayers Park in a pathetic display of false optimism. Hugh doesn't even have a scope. It's in California being fixed after he dropped it hard on the pavement for the hundredth time. I'd love to be there when they open it. It reminds me of the Tilley hat that went through the elephant. Kowa should pick up on this and feature Hugh and his scope in their ads. They would have to be without sound; when his scope hits the pavement he sometimes says very ungentlemanly things. I have never been able to see anything out of it when I look. Anyway, we get out at Sayers and as I'm setting up my scope, Hugh says, “I've got a not bad candidate for eider.” I look where he's pointing, swing my scope around, and bingo! — a pair of female
King Eiders
(302). Another brilliant beginning.

Unfortunately, we do not pay heed to Pope's Corollary Number 1 to Beadle's First Law: If you score a brilliant success right at the beginning, expect to pay dearly for that tiny bit of fun the whole rest of the day. Instead of going home, we rush around vainly searching for Black-headed Gull and Little Gull. Neither of us can believe we can't get Little Gull. It's the first year in ages that either of us has missed it. I should have chased it at McLaughlin Bay in May with Margaret when there were a few birds there, flying around in disbelief and despair that their wonderful adjacent habitat had been ruined. They have improved Oshawa Second Marsh to the point that there are hardly any Little Gulls at all — no mean feat of management as you could see 150 there three years ago and it was the best place in all of North America to find this gull. The bird is now best sought on Lake Erie, which is a bit far for me to go often. Richard Joos kindly offers to take me out to distant secret Little Gull haunts on Christmas morning, but I am otherwise occupied. I don't even run it by Felicity for a response. I sense this makes a negative impression on Richard, who had up to this point struggled to believe I was a real birder. This bird eludes me in 2007.

But it's still 302 seen, 304 including heard-onlys. I don't have to horse trade on New Year's Eve.

20
The Big Dipper

Man's life is a cheat and a disappointment.

— T
HE
F
OUR
T
EMPTERS IN
M
URDER IN THE
C
ATHEDRAL
BY
T.S. ELIOT

Screw Dickcissel!

— H
UGH
C
URRIE

N
O, THIS CHAPTER IS NOT
about the celestial ramifications of ornithology. Nor is it about following the drinking gourd. I use it as a nominal metaphor, something like The Big Bopper — though the meaning in this latter case suggests a large person who bops. Big Dipper signifies a person, not necessarily large, who dips big time.

You will have noted that I have studiously avoided the verb “to dip” and the even more odious “dip out,” used in England and Australia, throughout this text. Well, except for when Margaret missed the Ross's Goose and I couldn't resist it. I hate this use of the verb. Hughie talks about “dipping” all the time. It makes missing a bird seem even worse than it is.

I first heard the word used this way in Texas while looking at a Black-capped Vireo. The fellow who happened to be watching with me was as pleased as I was. “Yeaah, Ah'm pleased, too, re-aal pleased. Ah
dipped
on thet bird las' year,” he opined. It somehow seemed awful to have a special verb for missing a bird. After this, I started hearing the word everywhere.

So, even though this chapter is about some of my more spectacular failures, frustrating misses, and soul-destroying disappointments, I shall eschew the verb
dip
and try to use English instead.

It all began with the bloody Razorbill. As soon as I got back from England in January, I rushed off to Niagara-on-the-Lake to try for the famous Razorbill, sensing it was about to disappear any day. When I arrived around 11:00 a.m. on a freezing, wet day near the end of the second week of January, as I made ready to go for the bird, I saw two cold, wet, bedraggled figures slowly and dejectedly wending their way across the golf course, obviously crushed and broken in spirit. As they drew near I saw it was Bob Curry and Glenda Slessor.

“Hey, Bob,” I called cheerily. “Any luck?” I regretted my question as I heard it issue from my mouth. They had obviously not seen the bird. They did not tell me to shut my festering gob before they did it for me. They are decent, soft-spoken people. But they must have thought it. Oh, yes. How could they help it? The Razorbill was obviously dozing in the swells off the east coast of Newfoundland if not being passed by a Gyrfalcon over Saint-Louis-du Ha! Ha! en route; the wind chill was vicious even without the driving sleet; and they were frozen stiff. Then some guy gets out of his warm vehicle with a large mug of coffee steaming like Mount Etna and asks, “Any luck?” I guess I had hoped they would say it was there, but you have to spend hours of suffering before getting a glimpse. But no, they had been there over four hours and had seen nothing. I offered condolences. No bird, but it saved me a lot of time. I figured if Bob and Glenda had not found it, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell I was going to find it; so, I didn't even look, which means this was not even a full di—, I mean, miss. I think they call it a “demi-dip” in Texas; a “dipette” in Quebec.

When you chase a lot of birds hard, trying for some magical number, you're going to miss some — like the Townsend's Solitaire Margaret and I got so lost chasing in the Durham Regional Forest when attempting to make sense of a set of directions that our friends Rayfield Pye and Tyler Hoar had worked on together. It was our own fault for even dreaming these directions might actually lead us to the fowl.

I've told you about the birds I found. Now I shall tell you about a few more I missed. It would make the book too long to recount them all.

I told you about Little Gull — a classic case of “I'll get it later” syndrome, something to be avoided at all costs by Big Listers. You know how close I came to missing Eurasian Wigeon, Barred Owl, Sora, Eastern Screech-Owl, Acadian and Olive-sided Flycatcher, Louisiana Waterthrush, and King Eider. I am not even going to mention things like the Varied Thrush at Selkirk Provincial Park that betrayed me repeatedly and that I did not even expect to get.

But did I mention the Western Complex — birds whose names begin with the word Western? No, I did not. I have a strong dislike for almost all such birds. Take the Western Grebe, for example, a most unpleasant avian. I don't know how I could have loved them so much before 2007. The day after a Western was discovered on the Leslie Street Spit (even though there were those who felt at the time it might be a Clark's Grebe or a hybrid Clark's/Western), Andrew Don and I ran — literally — all the way to Pipit Point and combed the area. No Western Grebe. Carley, who had seen the bird and claimed he had “crippling views,” feigned deep sympathy upon learning of my miss. Of course, the bird turned up again several days later and hung around until I could get there again, whereupon it went into deep hiding for the day. A month later another one turned up in Oakville but it, too, went AWOL when I went for it — twice. Andrew even got photos of this one, narrowly avoiding being attacked by it.

Then there is Western Sandpiper. There were not even very many to chase this year, but Margaret and I chased the few that were reported and missed the bird every time. Jean Iron saw one of the birds the day before and the day after Margaret and I chased it. This did not make me feel any better.

And how about Western Tanager and Western Wood-Pewee? I missed the tanager at Long Point and there was not even a whisper of Western Wood-Pewee at Rainy River where it has been found at least once. Speaking of Rainy River, I had high hopes of Western Kingbird out there and searched valiantly with zero luck.

And you wonder why I don't like birds with Western in their names. I make exception only for the Western Meadowlark, which broke ranks this year and presented itself widely and generously all over Rainy River — a noble fowl that saved me from destroying my first edition of Peterson's
A Field Guide
to Western Birds
.

I mentioned nemesis birds earlier — birds used by the gods to punish cocksure birders, crush their over-weening pride and unwarranted confidence, and to generally make sure that one does not have any fun at all. Kentucky Warbler hardly counts here. I only missed it in one place — granted, four days in a row and always only by minutes — but this simply qualifies as run-of-the-mill disappointment. I could use Whip-poor-will as an example, but even here, although I missed it repeatedly everywhere, even for my heard-only list, I did not go hundreds of miles many times only to fail abjectly.

My real nemesis bird this year was the Dickcissel. Margaret got one at Pelee, so I could not even co-opt her into the search. Hugh, however,
needed
one and was determined to get me one, as well. I missed the first one posted by Geoff Carpentier north of Cobourg, but this was close to home and to be expected. Besides, nobody else found it. After several more misses, Hugh phoned and said, “We gotta go to Ferndale in the Bruce if we're going to get Dickcissel.”