Birding with Dad--May 30th, 2020 Bain Bird Count

Prelude:

(May 30th, 2020-- my avid birder son, Lucas and I are up and on the road early--heading to the (eastern north) shore to meet my parents. It is the Bain birdathon (Bain's Count) which my parents and uncle Gerald have taken part in for what seems like my entire lifetime--certainly for thirty years and maybe forty or more. The count is held each year on the last weekend of May. The very weekend our youngest Clara's year end weekend dance recitals are held and for which I am always back stage smiling.

This year COVID-19 precluded any in person recital for Clara but did not stop the bird count from happening. Lucas wouldn't be traveling to stay with Gerald or my parents, per usual, due to pandemic restrictions nor would he be allowed to travel in a vehicle with someone other than those in his own household so he needed a drive and I was happily free to go.)

Birding with Dad

Big Pond Road--my Bornish, maternal great grandmother--a MacPhee--grew up here but it's significance for me will never be tied to her. Rather, the image I now have seared into my heart is of birding here with dad on the 2020 Bain bird count.

The red clay road, deeply rutted from spring runoff, lifts dirt into the air. Cultivated blueberry fields hum with bees so we keep our windows up. When we arrive at the end we are greeted with an almost summer scape of pond and dune and cliff and sky that captures me immediately. Bayberry and scrubby evergreens line the trail which winds through the marshy pond edge and up and over a dune system replete with Marram Grass, False Dusty Miller and swooshy, sliding sand.

Lucas and my mom hang back and bird the pond while dad tells me in no uncertain terms that I am going with him through the winding trail, up the steep dune and down to the beach to see if there are any piping plovers nesting there this year.

The place is humming with charming dragonflies and despite the wind, swarming with the less endearing black flies as well.

Dad hands me a bug hat.

"Put it on. You are going to need it." he instructs.

I hesitate.

It is a pandemic and I am following guidelines strictly. Too strictly perhaps. I scan my brain for a way out of the situation but decide to take my chances with equipment sharing, put on the large mesh hood and follow my binocular wielding father on the trail.

"Just look, listen. I love it here and I thought you would too."

He is right. The air is wild with insect hum. Marshy scents competing with bayberry and seasalt overwhelm my senses in the very best way. I almost forget to physical distance as dad stops so suddenly and often, pointing at the Common Yellowthroats flitting through the bayberry bramble.

"Witchety, witchety--listen to them. That's what you are hearing. Just look, they're everywhere."

I am caught by their yellow flittering through the hush of green as we meander towards the dune.

"It's usually freezing here when we do this each spring." dad comments.

Today, apparently mild in comparison to many years, is golden in so many ways. I am thankful we have a nice day.

Walking the short dunes trail dad is reminded of climbing sand dunes in his childhood. Dad is almost seventy four years old. His childhood wasn't yesterday. Nor was my own as I, his eldest, am forty six but somehow always feeling like his little kid in moments like these.

When I was his little kid I was dad's right hand man. First born and similarly tempered I adored the attention and the special place I held in dad's eyes as his grass cutting helper in summer and snow shoveling partner in winter. I was happily out of the house and dad, so quiet like me, would always let me know he was glad for my help with a little hug or kind word.

Down on the beach, the saltspray licking at our bugshields, dad is instantly in awe of the freshwater river led from the pond as it sweeps out like a stylized "S" from inland.

"Wow--it never looks like this!" he exclaims breath taken by the unexpected new display of intention the water has taken to the sea.

"The plovers are always over there across the river head in the small rocky area."

There are no fences or signs here to indicate a protected nesting area. We scan for little shore bird bodies amongst the rocks but see none.

"Must have been Dorian." I respond which he agrees is plausible.

Back to the beauty at hand he gestures for me to look from east to west, sloping red capes to sunswept silent dunes.

"Beside the fishing boat what do you see?" he inquires then quickly answers "Nothing. Not a person, or cottage or any sign of anyone! Where else can you find this? Just look!"

I nod, my bug hat wobbling and flashing against my skin, in response.

"We should get back" he finishes and bends down to the pebble strewn sand at our feet like he is forty still.

I ask him what the white ones are.

He pauses a moment. "I used to know." and hands me one. "This is for you to remember today."

Today.

I reach out my hand to his and grasp the tiny white beach pebble like it is a talisman from some future I am not willing to contemplate the possibility of.

"Thanks dad" is all I can say for the lump in my throat is about the pebble's size.

Back up and over the dune I follow in my father's sliding footprints. His gentle, generous, caring way has led me through so many of life's ups and downs.

At the pond I thank him for the little excursion and remark on how badly I needed it. He knows the pandemic has been hard on me and that nature has always been my greatest restorer.

We all pile back into our cars and head on to another stop.

Further down the road, at dad's urging I am crouched down on a gabion, stream side, at the highway end of the Big Pond Rd to see the Marsh Marigolds.

"You have to see this--get out of the car and go down onto the gabion by the river's edge." dad says.

I see what he means.

A rushing, green oasis this late spring day. And yellow. Marsh Marigold yellow. The marigolds-vital, vibrant, poised- shine at waterside as though they want us to be still, be present to their fleeting beauty.

"The rushing white water over the rocks makes it."

I agree.

"It's stunning dad", I say. "Thank you so much for stopping here and making me get out."

Almost fifty, nevertheless in this moment I still want to be the river rocks/ object of my father's affection. Perhaps it will ever thus be. Regardless, I am so grateful for he and my mother's enthusiasm for the flora, fauna, fungi, lichen and avian delights of this little Island in the sea.

So many of my memories of my dear father seem stored like little snippets of precious bygone days and are too many to relay and understandably some stand out more than others. Today feels like it will walk into some future moment as a memory akin to those. Vibrant and tender both.

Thank you dad (and mom and Lucas too) for making my first Bain bird count so delightful!

And thank you Dad, for all the superb nature adventures where you and mom have helped me find my way to beauty, moment, by quiet moment.

Happy Father's Day to my dear dad and to all father's.

xo

Jill

Outtakes/some further highlights of the day:

Listening for spring warblers while stopped on the St Charles Rd where my uncle Gerald often sees Pileated Woodpeckers. Mom climbing down a steep ditch to look at a wildflower she was not familiar with. Me, her cautious daughter, imploring her not to head down past the coltsfoot and woodland violets to which she casts a stubborn (but always kind) eye.

"Watch me." she responded. Which I did.

A chipmunk staring at Lucas like he'd never seen a human before, roadside on the Kelly Rd.

Deep in the woods listening to a Hermit Thrush, its flute- like harmonizing song is so melodic.

Dad pointing out a bunch of drooping branched, Norway Spruce on the Bull Creek Rd and commenting on how striking they are and how he felt when he first saw one. I feel almost haunted by their beautifully ominous presence in this swamp like something out of the ordinary is about to happen realizing almost that instant that everything, everything, of this day is so wonderfully out of my ordinary of late.

*And if you are still reading and interested, here is the list of species we recorded and sent to Nature PEI's Dan McAskill:

Species sighted on the May 30th, 2020 Bain Bird Count. 1) Canada Goose 2) Wood Duck 3) American Wigeon 4) American Black Duck 5) Mallard  6) Blue-winged Teal 7) Green-winged Teal 8) Ring-necked Duck 9) Common Eider 10) Hooded Merganser 11) Northern Gannet 12) Double-crested Cormorant 13) Great Blue Heron 14) Osprey 15) Bald Eagle 16) Northern Harrier 17) Sharp-shinned Hawk 18) Red-tailed Hawk 19) Sora 20) Spotted Sandpiper 21) Willet 22) Lesser Yellowlegs 23) American Woodcock 24) Ring-billed Gull 25) Herring Gull 26) Great Black-backed Gull 27) Caspian Tern 28) Rock Pigeon 29) Mourning Dove 30) Great Horned Owl 31) Barred Owl 32) Ruby-throated Hummingbird 33) Belted Kingfisher 34) Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 35) Downy Woodpecker 36) Northern Flicker 37) American Kestrel 38) Olive-sided Flycatcher 39) Alder Flycatcher 40) Least Flycatcher 41) Eastern Kingbird 42) Blue-headed Vireo 43) Red-eyed Vireo 44) Bluejay 45) American Crow 46) Common Raven 47) Tree Swallow 48) Barn Swallow 49) Black-capped Chickadee 50) Red-breasted Nuthatch 51) Winter Wren 52) Golden-crowned Kinglet 53) Ruby-crowned Kinglet 54) Swainson's Thrush 55) Hermit Thrush 56) American Robin 57) European Starling 58) Cedar Waxwing 59) Ovenbird 60) Northern Waterthrush 61) Black-and-white Warbler 62) Nashville Warbler 63) Mourning Warbler 64) Common Yellowthroat 65) American Redstart  66) Northern Parula 67) Magnolia Warbler 68) Blackburnian Warbler 69) Yellow Warbler 70) Chestnut-sided Warbler 71) Yellow-rumped Warbler 72) Chipping Sparrow 73) Savannah Sparrow 74) Song Sparrow 75) Swamp Sparrow 76) White-throated Sparrow 77) Dark-eyed Junco 78) Red-winged Blackbird 79) Common Grackle 80) Purple Finch 81) American Goldfinch

82) Merlin

Cheers and be well,

Jill