The Reluctant Twitcher (22 page)

October Total: 14           Running Total: 293

November

• Pacific Loon. November 3, Lake Ontario off Oshawa Second Marsh

• Bohemian Waxwing. November 4, Willow Beach (Lake Simcoe)

• Pine Grosbeak. November 20, Brighton

• Yellow-breasted Chat. November 21, Ashbridge's Bay

• Northern Gannet. November 21, Cobourg Harbour

November Total: 5           Running Total: 298

December

• Hoary Redpoll. December 4, Margaret's Backyard

•
Purple Sandpiper (Number 300)
. December 4, Presqu'ile (Gull Island)

• Northern Hawk Owl. December 10, Stoney Creek

• King Eider. December 22, Sayers Park

December Total: 4           
Grand Total of Birds Seen: 302

B
IRDS
I O
NLY
H
EARD IN 2007

• King Rail. June 16, Pumpkin Point Marsh

• Connecticut Warbler. June 20, Rainy River

• [Northern Bobwhite. June 4, Long Point; not countable]

Total: 2             
Grand Total of Birds Seen and Heard: 304

B
IRDS
I E
XPECTED TO
S
EE
B
UT
D
ID
N
OT
S
EE IN 2007

• Western Grebe

• Tricolored Heron

• Western Sandpiper

• Red Phalarope

• Long-tailed Jaeger

• Little Gull

• Great Gray Owl

• Boreal Owl

• Rufous Hummingbird

• Whip-poor-will

• Townsend's Solitaire

• Varied Thrush

• Kirtland's Warbler

• Kentucky Warbler

• Dickcissel

B
IRDS
I F
ELT
I H
AD A
G
OOD
C
HANCE TO
S
EE
B
UT
D
ID
N
OT
S
EE IN 2007

• Tufted Duck

• Common Eider

• Great Cormorant

• Snowy Egret

• Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

• Glossy Ibis

• Black Vulture

• Gyrfalcon

• Black-headed Gull

• Arctic Tern

• Western Kingbird

• Cave Swallow

B
IRDS
I D
ID
S
EE
, B
UT
D
ID
N
OT
T
HINK
I H
AD A
G
OOD
C
HANCE TO
S
EE

• White-faced Ibis

• Sabine's Gull

• Eurasian Collared-Dove

• Northern Wheatear

• Lark Sparrow

(I had hoped this category would be larger.)

B
EST
B
IRD OF THE
Y
EAR

• Northern Wheatear

Acknowledgements

No man is an island, or even a peninsula, entire of itself.

— J
ON
D
UNNE, HIS ONLY
M
EDITATION

W
HEN YOU DO A
B
IG
Y
EAR
, you don't do it alone; you need help. All birders will know people similar to my two main accomplices. Actually, probably not, come to think of it. What I meant to say is that they will know people who play the same roles for them in their birding endeavours as my two partners did.

It would be churlish not to thank Hugh Currie up front for conceiving the idea in the first place that I should do a Big Year in Ontario. Though he led me to the slaughter not entirely without deceit, it would be pusillanimous not to acknowledge his leading role. I could have had a worse mentor; he has seen over three hundred in a year in Ontario more than once and his all-time Ontario life list is 418 as of this writing. One doesn't get that number of birds without knowing something about where and how to find them. His philosophy is that the one who stays home by the phone or the computer gets the most birds in the long run; he doesn't like “fishing trips” or going about aimlessly looking for birds. He likes to wait for leads on twitchable birds and then rush off in hot pursuit. He saw 297 in Ontario this year in spite of a manic predisposition to Scrabble and bridge, and a four-week trip to Peru (which put him over five thousand on his world list) at a crucial time in the fall. He's a serious birder — a twitcher. Rigid, compulsive, and obsessive others might say, but you need someone like this. It should perhaps be mentioned that in these pages he is occasionally referred to as the
Reisefuehrer
or trip leader, albeit with a touch of
lèse majesté
.

Then, of course, there's my other main partner in crime, Margaret Bain, former Chair of the Ontario Bird Records Committee — a presence. Margaret is what is usually called, perhaps euphemistically, “a going concern.” She has the biggest backyard list in all of Cobourg, and perhaps Ontario. (It includes Kirtland's Warbler!) She volunteered to help — or did I dragoon her, I forget — and to feed me birds. I figured from the start that if I could stay ahead of her, I'd have a pretty good chance at three hundred. The difficulty of such a manoeuvre was what pushed me over the top. Margaret, it should be mentioned, is not averse to “fishing trips” and likes to tear around and find her own birds. She ended up with 301 birds for the year. Not bad for someone who claimed for ever so long that she wasn't really trying at all to stay even with me, let alone, God forbid, ahead of me.

Many others deserve my thanks, including the redoubtable Jim Fairchild, who, sadly, passed away shortly before publication doing the very thing he loved (it was always hard to stay ahead of this one; no matter how hot and secret the tip you had just received, Jim would be there looking for the bird when you arrived); Doug McRae; Fred Helleiner (whom I have known since he was my camp counsellor when I was only eight years old — he has much to answer for); Andrew Don; Atikokan's own Dave Elder; Dan Lee; Don Shanahan; Cheryl Edgecombe and the Hamilton crew; Bruce Ripley and the Kingston crew; Willy and Betsy D'Anna and their fellow New Yorkers, the patrollers of the Niagara River who miss little (and people think those traffic jams on the Niagara bridges are caused by tourists and truckers); and people too numerous to be named who phoned me or posted good stuff on Ontbirds (the Ontario Field Ornithologists' listing site).

Bob Curry, Ron Pittaway, and Mark Peck never failed to ask me how my Big Year was going — quite a spur. The first person to congratulate me on reaching three hundred was Mark. I ran into him in a rather seedy tavern — an unexpected place to meet a senior ornithologist from the Royal Ontario Museum, to be sure. I believe I was there canvassing for some worthy charity — and he told me I had really achieved something. True, he seemed rather surprised, even bewildered, but it made the whole thing seem worthwhile to me.

Apart from repeatedly saying things like, “It will be nice to have a life again when this is over,” my wife, Felicity, was a tower of strength during my Big Year, especially toward the end when she realized what it would be like to live with me if I only got to 299. She read a few of the early excerpts and commented that some of what I had written was mildly witty — in the parts that weren't just juvenile (or did she say sophomoric?). Anyway, for this keen encouragement, I am grateful. She was also the first to point out that much of the appeal of this book lies in the fact that readers will immediately realize that anybody can succeed in a Big Year if I did, although she did not spell out the last part.

I would like to thank and praise the photographers, fellow birders all, who so kindly and gladly let me use some of their brilliant work: Sam Barone (OFO and TOC), Jean Iron (OFO and TOC, digiscoper supreme), my birding buddy Andrew Don (OFO), Barry S. Cherriere (OFO), Mark Peck (ROM, OFO, TOC), Carol M. Horner (OFO, TOC), Doug McRae (OFO and a scamp), Steve Pike (OFO), and Mike Burrell (OFO). Their photography lifts the book up to a higher level. I badly wanted to avoid the sort of Karsh-type bird portraits that might be appropriate for a field guide or picture book of birds, and all of them came through for me. It might also be mentioned that, where possible, I chose pictures of the actual birds that I myself saw. Hal Bowen has once again proved his genius with a camera by getting a shot of me where I look borderline normal, something few other photographers, for some reason, have been able to do.

And then there are the artists: David Beadle and Neil Broadfoot. After we saw the Northern Wheatear together at Shrewsbury, I asked Dave to paint me a Wheatear for the cover and he produced the stunning picture that appears on the front of this book. Neil, a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour who has illustrated two other books for me, did the maps and the other little impressionistic drawings in classic Broadfoot style. Thanks, guys.

Last, but far from least, I would like to thank Barry Penhale and Jane Gibson, Allison Hirst, Jennifer Scott, and Susan DeMille — Barry and Jane for their unflagging support of the book right from the start, Allison for her conscientious and thoughtful editorial work and for her attempts to keep me within the bounds, Jennifer for her inspired layout and design work, and Sue for her expert advice and help with the colour photographs.

Felicity Pope, Margaret Bain, Hugh Currie, and, of course, Allison Hirst, all read the text with an eye to various errors. If any errors remain, I just can't imagine to whom they should be attributed.

Parts of this book appeared in an earlier form in the
Newsletter
of the Toronto Ornithological Club under the excellent editorship of David Farrell. Club members' constant encouragement was much appreciated. Sandra Eadie appears to have found it killingly funny. She has soared in my estimation. I hope everyone responds to the book as she has.

It should perhaps be mentioned in closing that the use of capitalization for all specific bird names follows normal usage in the field and, as Kenn Kaufman's editor explains in a note at the outset of Kenn's classic
Kingbird Highway
, it allows one to avoid ambiguity; for example, Little Gulls refers to more than one Little Gull, whereas little gulls means the smaller species rather than the larger ones.

Index

The page numbers in this index refer to the print edition of this book.

I
NDEX OF
B
IRD
N
AMES

Avocet, American, 79, 84, 195

Bittern, American, 192
Least, 75, 78, 79, 81, 92, 93, 197

Blackbird, Brewer's, 96, 98, 197
Red-winged, 189
Rusty, 190
Yellow-headed, 75, 77, 78, 83, 98, 195

Bluebird, Eastern, 46, 190
Mountain, 95–96

Bobolink, 83, 195

Bobwhite, Northern, 91, 145, 201

Brambling, 37

Brant, 86, 87, 196

Bufflehead, 186

Bunting, Indigo, 194
Snow, 188

Canvasback, 187

Cardinal, Northern, 188

Catbird, Gray, 193

Chat, Yellow-breasted, 82, 84, 155–57,
200

Chickadee, Black-capped, 186

Boreal, 58, 187

Chuck-will's-widow, 84, 120

Coot, American, 187

Cormorant, Double-crested, 186
Great, 202

Cowbird, Brown-headed, 190

Crane, Sandhill, 190

Creeper, Brown, 90, 191

Crossbill, Red, 187
White-winged, 187

Crow, American, 53, 186

Cuckoo, Black-billed, 83, 195

Yellow-billed, 47, 84, 195

Curlew, Eskimo, 16

Dickcissel, 48, 177–80, 201

Dove, Eurasian Collared-, 106, 197, 202
Mourning, 186