How sweet it is!
— ENVER HOXHA
WHEN HUGH SUGGESTS WE KICK off my Big Year with a mid-January trip ( January 19–21) to Algonquin Provincial Park, I am all for it. I have already missed almost two weeks by being in England — an inauspicious beginning — and the Razorbill that was so good to me in December 2006 disappeared from Niagara-on-the-Lake just before my return. A quick mid-January trip to Niagara produced ten species of gulls, including California Gull (a first-winter bird in Hamilton), Lesser Black-backed Gull, and Black-legged Kittiwake, but nothing rare, and I was disappointed. I felt that I desperately needed to get going. American Three-toed Woodpeckers had been showing up in the Park and this is obviously a species not to miss. It becomes one of our five target Algonquin birds.
We decide to spend two nights in Whitney to give us the better part of three days’ birding. This turns out to be a smart move. We need the third morning.
Hugh suggests I mention the trip to Margaret to see if she is interested. Margaret, of course, is not about to be left behind. At this point I still firmly believe that she and Hugh are both simply committed to helping me reach three hundred and have no secret intentions of their own to get there ahead of me. The sheer altruism of it all impresses me very favourably. I can’t imagine being that selfless.
On Friday morning, January 19, Margaret and Hugh and I leave for Algonquin. We go straight to our motel at Whitney, check in, have lunch, and head for the feeders at the Nature Centre. The feeders are good to us; so is the road. By dark, at 4:45 p.m., I have added seven birds to my year list: Hairy Woodpecker, American Tree Sparrow, Purple Finch, Common Redpoll, Pine Siskin, Evening Grosbeak, and Gray Jay, of which the last species is one of our five target birds. We have also seen many crossbills of both kinds right on the road and are well satisfied, even without our other four targets. None of us know that we will not see redpolls again all winter.
The next morning we get an early start, despite the fact that after breakfast it is still minus thirty degrees Celsius. Though the Centre doesn’t officially open until 9:00 a.m., we sneak in a side door and find wild activity at the feeders featuring at least fifty very bold Evening Grosbeaks. Then we go off in serious pursuit of our target birds — Hugh doesn’t like to fool around — and by dark we have Black-backed Woodpecker and Boreal Chickadee, both on the Opeongo Road.
The chickadee is easy, but the woodpecker causes some stress. I see it fly across the road in front of me and mark where I think it lands. I plunge in after it across an alder bog and up a steep hill and find it about seventy-five metres back in the bush, busily attacking a spruce tree. I call out “Black-backed” and turn to look for Hugh and see him flailing madly through the alders up to his waist in snow. Trying not to think about heart attacks, I watch him motor up the hill. Thank God the bird is still there.
“Where’s Margaret?” I ask.
“I’m down here on the road,” comes a little voice on the wind. Suspecting we just might have a good bird when she saw us both suddenly run off the road and plunge into the snow-filled bush, she has come up to see what it is all about. “What have you got?”
“A Black-backed,” I say.
“I’ll be right up,” says Margaret.
“No,” I call, “wait there. I’ll come down to get you. There’s an easier way up.” I don’t want her wrecking her hip replacement this early in the trip. Save her for the Three-toed, you know. She has great ears.
I find a better way back to the road and break the trail a bit. Margaret plunges in behind me, and all is well until we come to a log I have gone over. Since Margaret is not a tall woman and is up to her chest in snow, this log poses a problem. Certain that the Black-backed is by now sated and about to fly off, we desperately beat our way around the log and even before cresting the hill, Margaret cries, “I see it!” Fortunately it is high enough up the tree that she can see it without plowing up the last steep ten metres.
Photo by Andrew Don.
Black-backed Woodpecker (male). Algonquin Provincial Park. Aptly named, this boreal species loves dying spruce.
We all get back to the road alive. Success is sweet.
But still no Spruce Grouse or American Three-toed Woodpecker. Nobody else has seen this rare woodpecker and only Jim Fairchild has seen one Spruce Grouse. Late in the day we search the spruce bog where Jim saw the grouse, but no luck. Margaret patrols the road and Hugh and I plow around in the bog. When I come out of the bog, I see Hugh talking to Margaret and every once in a while taking little stamping ten-metre runs, pounding his feet like a young goat trying out new hooves. What now? I wonder. In our last half hour this troubling behaviour only increases, until we get into the car and head back to Whitney for supper.
Photo by Mark Peck.
American Three-toed Woodpecker (male).Churchill, Manitoba. In the Algonquin area, this quiet, uncommon bird is usually very hard to find.
As we eat, Margaret comments on how fortunate it is that we all stayed so warm even at minus thirty. Hugh allows as to how his feet got “a bit cold near the end,” but otherwise he is fine. Now, you should know that Hugh birds almost exclusively in tennis shoes year round since his feet get sore otherwise. In the winter, he occasionally puts on loose-fitting open galoshes over the tennis shoes.
“I wonder how he keeps the snow out of his boots.” Margaret says.
“Beats me,” I reply.
Looking forward to an early night, we retire to our rooms. I just get my head on the pillow when the TV suddenly blares and Brother Currie commences some prolonged channel surfing, until finally lighting upon a film, which he says should be really good.
“Watch whatever you like,” I say. “Nothing will keep me awake.”
How wrong I am. Night of the Killer Mutants does just that. The death screams and hideous torturing keep on for so long I actually begin to watch myself. Hugh seems to be enjoying it immensely. It’s so bad, it’s actually interesting.
“It can’t go on much longer,” I remark after what seems like hours. “Nearly everybody’s dead.”
“The baby’s still gotta get it,” says Hugh. He knows these things.
We still talk about it.
The next morning Hugh’s feet are still cold. I tell him to put on more socks. He does. As we are leaving, he says his feet are still cold. And seem wet, if he is not mistaken.
“This won’t do,” I say. “You’re going to put on my extra slush-eaters with the felt liners and two pairs of dry wool socks. Take your galoshes off.”
He wants to get going but grudgingly agrees. As he pulls off the first galosh, a great cascade of water comes rushing out. The boot was full of snow all night. Half of the water has already been absorbed by his tennis shoe and socks, but the rest pours out merrily.
Knowing Margaret will never believe this, I take the other boot out to the car and pour the water out of it in front of her. We exchange meaningful looks.
Ten minutes later, with Hugh in warm dry slush-eaters and wool socks, we set out to nail the Spruce Grouse and American Three-toed. Everyone else has gone home and we are the only ones searching. No one found a Three-toed Woodpecker on Friday or Saturday. Things look rather grim.
Photo by Andrew Don.
Spruce Grouse (male). Algonquin Provincial Park. True to its nickname, this “fool hen” just sat and gawked in one of its beloved spruce trees.
The bird god, however, is with us. At the Spruce Bog Trail, where yesterday there was nothing, we almost immediately get both species. True, Margaret has a bad moment with the woodpecker because her binoculars can’t focus under three metres and the bird is almost on top of her, but we cope even with this.
It is hard not to gloat on the way home. We are the only ones to get Common Redpoll and Three-toed Woodpecker and we get all our target species. This does not happen very often. You have to gloat when you get the chance. Believe me.