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August 10, 2006  Eighth Month Moods Did you feel that slight bump as the last bird of this year's nesting season falls to the ground? Did you hear that gentle swish as the door on another breeding season swings shut? You didn't? What were you doing, watching the six o'clock news? We certainly must have a talk about your priorities. Whether witnessed or not, August, like a great cookie sheet in the annual bake-off of life, is removed from the oven of creation each year, and has its contents dumped upon the kitchen counter. Eggs turn into birds, flightless birds grew flight feathers, and late summer worms worry about a new, albeit slightly dozy army of hungry mouths. This week I made my way to a landscape festooned with newly disgorged nest-life. My goal - to impress some Ontario visitors with the Cariboo's vibrant bird life. Always the cautious type, I prefaced our outing by explaining that August is a challenging time for birding. Had I security of ego, I would have explained that under August's influence I'm not totally sure of the bird sounds I'm hearing. Further, I'm not totally sure of the birds I'm seeing, and worst of all, my theories about bird movements are speculative. (My theories are speculative during the other months of the year but as winter yields to spring and birds move steadily from south to north, my rationalizing seems safe and solid.) All bets are off in August. Much like August meadows, the birds morph to confusing shades of gold and brown. Gone are the crisp, high-contrast spring courting outfits and the loud easily identifiable male songs. Gone too, is each bird's fidelity to definable habitats. With all manner of bird turning up anywhere at any time in intermediate plumages, or juvenile plumages, or molting adult plumage, or eclipse plumages; and the choruses of pleading sounds only a mother bird could identify - August is a dangerous time to be birding. Another unnerving thing about the eighth month is the smell of its perfume. By August the year has acquired a lived-in, old-auntie-complete-with-doilies smell. It is not the big wall of after-shave stench with which a used car salesman might assail you even before his first grapple-hook words, but it essentially has the same effect. August has decorated the world to the walls - it has no room on its dusty side-tables for more knick-knacks - it is squarely at home with the odours to prove it. I arrived early at the field where I was to walk with the guests from Ontario and put a tentative foot outside my van. Could I face August alone? Immediately, the smell of the month filled my nostrils. Rather than feel nervous, I was entranced. The scent of August was a medley - partly ripe fruit, the sweetness of mature grasses, the heat of old foliage and the acrid scent of humming insects. 'Would you like to have a sweet my dear?' It asked as it gently foisted a sparkling, cut-crystal candy dish of a morning under my nose. 'And would you like a bird with that?' it asked enchantingly. Entranced, I whispered that I would. Suddenly the feathered eye-candy hitting my brain turned sweet and sour. What is that weird flavour? Is it a bird I know - perhaps a streaky juvenile Warbler? No! It's an adult Warbler in autumn colours. But wait, It's eating berries. A Warbler wouldn't eat berries. Or would it? Remember, this is August, the month of birding illusions. Perhaps it's all just a dream sequence. To shake the taste of confusion from my brain I turned and focussed on a sound I knew, the gently lisping of Cedar Waxwings. I hugged them to me with my binoculars. It was like finding a friendly face in a foreign land. They returned my embrace with warmth and a question. "What are those birds just behind us in the Saskatoon bush?" They seemed to ask. "We would love to know." I replied, "Oh, those yellowish hunch-backed birds? Aren't they juvenile Western Tanagers?" "We wouldn't ask it we knew," the Waxwings replied in unison. They were in on it too! By the time everyone else arrived for our walk I felt as if I'd already been mugged. In the following hours as we walked the baked hillside, the questions flew and I swatted at them with a feeling as satisfyingly as hitting big mud balls with a tennis racquet. What made me accept that the silent Empidonax Flycatcher was indeed a Willow? How could I tell that one particular brown blob out of the two dozen other brown blobs on the water was a female Wigeon? How did I know the scruffy-looking long-legged mud walker was a young Virginia rail and not a Sora? How could the bird I identified as a young female Evening Grosbeak turn into an immature Cowbird as it flew across the field? Was the slightly pale throated brown Swallow a female Tree Swallow, or a juvenile Rough-winged with a slight colour variation? Had they not been mine I might have found all these questions disconcerting as they spilled silently out onto the floor of my mind under the clear, mesmerizing gaze of August. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
