First Encounters of the lasting Kind

FIRST ENCOUNTERS OF THE LASTING KIND  

October/November, 2012 issue  
 We  no longer get to read Barry McCullagh’s great offerings in the   Belleville Intelligencer. The man whose columns I always enjoyed, passed  away  about five years ago. The restaurant north of Brighton where we  first met is  also gone. I saw him watching us from a nearby table, as  we carried on, lost in  our excitement after the completion of another  Presqu’ile Park winter bird  count. In fact, the waitress had already  spoken to us twice about excessive  noise. It was about 1969, as I  recall, and barely in my mid-twenties, I surely  was being viewed as the  ring leader as we shared in the impressive checklist of  birds we had  managed to acquire that day. 
 
 After  the noisy gang had departed, and I remained to finish my cup of   coffee, the gentleman who had been eyeing us, came over to my table. I  prepared  to be raked over the coals for disturbing his meal. Instead,  he spoke softly,  and was curious about the strange winter activity over  which we had shown such  excitement, especially given that the night  outside was reduced to zero  visibility as a result of lake effect snow.  He asked about our interest in  nature, about birding in particular,  and the story behind this event in which we  had just participated. At  some point he must have told me that he wrote for the  Intelligencer. He  mentally took notes as I explained the history of the winter  bird  count, and the following week, his encounter with us and our enthusiasm  for  nature, was woven into an editorial. I never forgot that.
  
 I  bumped into Barry a few times after that, but never had occasion to  speak  to him much after our first meeting, but I always made it a point  to read his  contributions whenever they appeared in the Intelligencer.  People do that to me,  when I first meet them. I always remember first  encounters, then try to follow  their careers or chosen path of interest  to find out more about them.
  
 I  still remember the time I first met the late Trentonian nature  columnist  Orval Kelly in 1965. My only means of transportation then was  a small Honda  motorcycle, and I had just spent an hour on it in  mid-March under cloudy skies  and melting snow to meet this person.  Shivering uncontrollably after the long  ride, I arrived at his house  and rang the doorbell. He startled me at the door  with a strange, white  kerchief tied across his chin and secured behind his neck.  He quickly  explained to me that it was just protection for some minor chin   surgery, and that he didn’t always look like this. We were close birding  friends  until his untimely death a few months later from a massive  heart attack.
  
 The  late Helen Quilliam of Kingston was the high priest of eastern Ontario   birding. She was a nature columnist, and had written a book on the  birds of the  Kingston region. My first meeting was not with her, but  her husband, whose first  words in a heavy English accent as he greeted  me at the door, as he glanced  about, “My God, do I smell a skunk?” I  quickly identified myself and hastily  added that the odour could be  from the exhaust of my motorcycle that had seeped  its way into my  clothes. However, he quickly apologized and was actually making   reference to a real skunk smell that had momentarily drifted by and  assailed his  nostrils from the neighbour’s property. I was then  cordially invited in to meet  Helen.
  
 Many  of these first encounters became close friends and assisted me during   my earlier years of birding. Helen and I birded together for years and  she  unselfishly spent time guiding me through the complexities of bird  identity, as  did Orval Kelly before her, in the few months that I knew  him. 
  
 To  the best of my knowledge, Frank Tumpane who wrote in the now defunct   Telegram, was not a birder. However, I enjoyed his columns because  whatever the  issue, he shot from the hip, with no apology. When I gave a  presentation to a  group in Campbellford three years ago, I randomly  picked a gentleman from the  audience to assist me with a prop on stage.  The stranger turned out to be Frank  Tumpane’s son, Michael! We did go  on a birding trip together, and his greatest  gift to me was a book that  his dad had once owned and kept on his desk at the  Telegram. In it,  Michael wrote, “Dad would be pleased to know that his book  ended up in  the hands of a working journalist.” 
  
 Birding  is supposed to be a hobby, but I also learned through the years  that  it can be an unforgiving world out there, filled with competition and  hard  knocks. After one uncharitable review of my very first book on the  birds of  Prince Edward County, one Toronto MNR employee put his arm on  my shoulder, and  said, I didn’t think too much of the review he gave  your book, and I think even  less of the person who wrote the review.” I  thought to myself, what kind words  coming from a professional, who  didn’t even know me, yet chose to console me in  this way when even I  knew that we must all be able to withstand constructive  criticism. 
  
 To  the best of my knowledge, the late Roger Tory Peterson was not involved   in the newspaper business, but he did write a lot of books, including  everyone’s  birding Bible, “A Field Guide To the Birds.” When I met  Roger Tory Peterson at a  conference in London, Ontario, he first  instructed me to change my camera  position, and photograph him from  “his good side.” In our brief conversation  while he was busily  autographing field guides, I remember him referring to  himself as being  “the bridge between the shotgun and the binoculars in bird  watching.”  Before he came along, the primary way to observe birds was to shoot   them and stuff them.
  
 First  encounters. It’s strange how the sometimes rather innocuous quotes   they make can stay with you a lifetime. A well respected ornithologist,  the late  Jim Baillie (after whom the Baillie Birdathon is named) grew  up in the old  school of thought, and was trained that in order for  sightings of new birds to  be confirmed, they must be “collected”. He  came out with a classic one day. I  had spoken to him in the mid-1960s  about a rare lark bunting we had found, but  no one could see the bird  clearly enough to determine whether it was, in fact, a  lark bunting, or  a simply a leucistic red-winged blackbird with unusual patches  of  white on its wings. With his hand cupped to one side of his mouth, he  bent  over and whispered, “To settle the dispute over what the bird  actually is, I  think you should just go out and quietly shoot it.” 
  
 For more information on birding and nature and guided hikes, check out the  NatureStuff website at www.naturestuff.net 
  
 Terry Sprague lives in Prince Edward County and is self-employed as a  professional interpretive naturalist.