It was Thanksgiving. I met my mother at her home in Chatham and then we headed to our cottage for the holiday weekend.
Along the way we made an unscheduled stop at Jack Miner’s Bird Sanctuary. Mom had grown up in southwestern Ontario and had often regaled me with stories of the Canada geese that stopped there during migration. The fields, she said, were “black with birds.” Why we decided to stop this year I don’t remember, but we did. It wasn’t like we did it often, and in fact, we haven’t done it since. I remember thinking it wasn’t worth stopping.
When we did stop it was apparent that the migration had begun. The field set aside for the birds was already full.
On the edge of the field there was an old-fashioned blackboard, on which someone had written that the geese would arrive daily at 4:00 and 4:25 p.m. Yeah right, I thought. I mean really, how could they know the time? I doubted that any birds would arrive at all.
Well, it was nearly 4:00 p.m. so I told Mom we might as well hang around to see what happened. I remember she smiled, a little smugly I might add, knowing full well what was to happen. We were in the midst of swans and mallards when I noticed a peculiar sound.
Out of the east, from the direction of Leamington, the geese came flying in. They came in by the hundreds, if not thousands, and they descended onto the field just across the road. On and on they came, a seemingly endless stream of geese, flapping and squawking as only geese can do, so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think.
I stood for a moment, stock-still and stunned. I couldn’t believe the sheer number! When I got over my initial shock, I checked my watch.
My jaw dropped.
4:00 p.m.
Not a minute before or after, but bang on the hour!
The geese continued to fly in for several more minutes. I was beginning to wonder if there’d be an end to them. Eventually there were just a few geese in the sky. Most of the hundreds had landed on what was now a very full field. I’d just caught my breath when, wouldn’t you know, the whole thing started up again.
This time the birds came in from the direction of Essex. I checked my watch, and yup, you guessed it, it was precisely 4:25 p.m. I remember thinking that if the buses in Toronto were as punctual as those two flocks of birds, my daily commute would be far less painful.
I still feel awestruck by what I saw that day in late October so many years ago. By that, and by the fact that my mom never said “I told you so” even though she had every right to.
Edmonton, Alberta