The Reluctant Twitcher by Richard Pope Read Free Book Online Page A

driving from New York to Indianapolis on automatic pilot and apparently took the wrong Y somewhere and ended up at Cleveland before realizing what had happened, thereby adding a full day onto my journey. She is not mollified.
    Though we miss the Eurasian Wigeon at Long Point, we do get six new birds and this assuages the grief, pain, humiliation, and mortification, if not the sorrow and despair. I now check maps before having Margaret navigate. And I never discuss literature with her in a moving vehicle.
    April 27, I get the Yellow-throated Warbler at Stoney Creek. Quick and easy the way Hughie likes ’em. Fabulous viewing, though Dave Beadle complains plaintively that the bird is too far away for good shots with his video camera, until Andrew Don pishes the bird in so close that Beadle is forced to complain equally bitterly that now the bird is too close. We are all pleased, even Dave, because it is a yellow-lored bird, not the usual albilora . Hugh does not mention the grave once on the way home.
    May 1, I get the first of many Marbled Godwits for the year on Amherst Island, having been told by a guy without a scope that the bird is definitely not there — a pleasing way to find a bird. I do not know at the time that I shall see many of these birds all over the province this year. It’s good to have a few extras in the bank for the horse-trading on New Year’s Eve if one is stuck around 299. You know the kind of thing: I’ll give ya three Marbled Godwits, a White Pelican, and as many Black-billed Magpies as you want for your Razorbill or Dickcissel.

    Photo by Andrew Don.
    Yellow-throated Warbler. Edgelake Park, Stoney Creek. Andrew pished this rarity down almost into our hands.
    All in all, I feel I am in pretty good shape at 182 species before I leave for Point Pelee on May 7.

7
Pelee Madness

    God’s colors are all fast.
    â€” J OHN G REENLEAF W HITTIER
    M ONDAY MORNING , May 7, finds Felicity and me heading for Point Pelee, a riotous kaleidoscope of colours swirling in my mind. We go during the week, since Felicity doesn’t enjoy the crush on the Point. Then we spend a week on the Island with peace and quiet where we can visit the Pelee Island Bird Observatory and see warblers in the hand and hear Graeme Gibson the Younger explain the meaning of banding to the birds he so loves (if you have to be banded, this is the guy to be banded by) — and all this for free. Anyway, since we are not going to the annual convention of the North American Phragmites Society, we do not go straight to Stoney Point, in spite of wondrous memories of Yellow-headed Blackbird and Least Bittern in the pre-Phragmites era. This pleases Felicity because it also means we do not have to stop in Comber. She hates Comber; I suppose not least because we never see anything there. She was not there the time in the late fifties when my father and I had the male Kentucky Warbler only three metres away from us foraging in a half-submerged toilet bowl with fetching blue glyphs right beside the lagoon trail. She has no memories of the place. Anyway, she is pleased that for once we are heading for Rondeau Provincial Park to make a quick stop en route to Pelee for a reported Cerulean Warbler.
    P ELEE A REA T RIP H IGHLIGHTS
    Cerulean Warbler. Seen at eye level, feeding just above the water in the pond near the old horse stables at Rondeau — a breathtaking male.
    Worm-eating Warbler. Also seen at and below eye level at point-blank range almost necessitating a reverse-bins look in Tilden’s Woods in Point Pelee National Park — a very bright peach-coloured male.
    Summer Tanager. Seen consuming bees at the “bee tree” at the first Y in Tilden’s Woods.

    Photo by BarryS. Cherriere.
    Worm-eating Warbler. Point Pelee. Difficult to find in Ontario, one does not see this bird every year, even at Pelee.
    Henslow’s Sparrow. Seen on the trail at the West Beach on the Point. “On the trail” is