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August 31, 2006  Summery Convictions In years gone by I've often felt that August in the Cariboo is not a summer month. Like many other months August features 31 days, but startlingly few are hot or dry. Where are the long days when the hills covered in wild blueberries shimmered with heat waves and Popsicle's coloured and glued the forearm before they could be eaten. Perhaps I am just drawing upon the memory of past summers spent in Northwestern Ontario or the coast of British Columbia. Ontario Augusts are the fairest comparison but being spent so long ago, their true nature is easily shrouded in the mists of reverie - surely not the stuff of meteorological science. This year however, August is surprisingly summery (radically atypical may better cover how the days have been.) Instead of the usual short warm spell followed by rain with a marked temperature drop - our usual August fare - this year we have a different rhythm. It began in July with scorching sunny weather interrupted by the occasional cloud or drop or two of rain then back to intense sunny days. This rhythm continued into August and with each interruption in the heat I suspected a return to weeks of what one infamous American celebrity dubbed 'the ice age rainforest effect'. But it didn't happen. Each brief interruption in the often uncomfortable sunny weather has been just that, brief. And with that August comes to an end. 'Say no more about me lacking a summer attitude,' it said boldly. 'I have made August a summer month, so shut up about it.' As a result of this development I must now reevaluate my stand. So it is during these hot, and as I said before, often-uncomfortable days, that I began to see the annual outflow of migrant birds. Under such moderate conditions migration seemed odd. Waves of Yellow-rumped Warblers began to pass through, scouring well-leafed green trees for insects and worms. For an hour the yard would be teeming with mixed flocks of Warblers, Tanagers, Kinglets, and the occasional Vireo. Then all would fall silent. Only the call of Chickadees, recently returned to the yard to seek sunflower seeds could be heard, perhaps a Gray Jay might chatter. Then another wave would hit. Yellow-rumped Warblers were the most numerous species in these flocks but Orange-crowned warblers could also be picked out amid the fluttering masses at a ratio of what I estimated to be about 50 to 1. I don't think this number represented the true population ration of these species, just that orange-crowns probably had another migration strategy and these odd birds were simply caught up in the passing parade. Townsend's Warblers could also be found in these fly-throughs, a Warbler that I never see often enough. Of the several I saw, only one was a male, and even he was in a bit of a subdued plumage. Perhaps it was the yellow that lacked the punch it usually has, but it's odd with colouration, sometimes it takes two colours for one to subdue another. Whatever it was, this was not the Townsend's of spring. And there was another odd feature; I was drawn to this male by a strange song coming from a fir tree, a kind of strident recitation-without-passion sort of outpouring like someone who has memorized the words but not the import of what was being said. I had heard this song a few times recently but never knew the authors. The binoculars revealed the Townsend's male and then it was gone, this time as part of a flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers, Juncos, Mountain Bluebirds and a variety of Sparrows making their way across a golden meadow. As August continued to shine the birds continued to move. The Swallow species have now been pared down to the Barn as their only representative. Hummingbirds have whirred off almost unnoticed. Like a cloth that is growing threadbare, the holding weft and warp of year-round resident birds is coming to the fore once again. The fluffy comfort of a deep pile of feathered species is tearing away. And all this amid the heat of a month that was so often cool that migration seemed logical. And now I hear, after a day with a burst of rain and cool air, that another hot spell is on the way, this one taking us into the first week of September at least. It doesn't have to do this, you know. I never said that September in the Cariboo had to be a summer month too. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
