Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
LEARNING ABOUT BIRDS FROM THE TRACTOR SEAT February/March, 2012 issue I saw my very first pipit about 40 years ago while ploughing down a corn field one fall on our farm in Prince Edward County where I live. I was barely in my 20s and had a new Massey-Ferguson 65 diesel tractor. I remember it well as this one had “multi-power” shift on the go. At first, I thought I had become high on the diesel fumes that were hitting me in the face every time the wind snatched the exhaust just right. The little bird I stared at was sort of olive in colour and rather comical as it stood atop a lump of overturned sod and wagged its tail up and down as though unsure of its balance. The bird wasn’t alone. Some 50 or so others, cleverly camouflaged by the dark earth, suddenly took flight and soared high into the air, bouncing around above me like overcharged atoms, before circling around and returning to the ground again only a few metres ahead of the tractor. Stopping the tractor, I snatched my new Bushnells from the tool box and focussed on what I perceived to be a new species on an albeit short life list that I had accumulated in this interest of only a few years. Dad had also seen them and wondered what they were as he ploughed the field just across the fence with his smaller MF 35 tractor and two-furrow plough. Father and son birders. Somehow with the limited resources available at that time, we learned that they were pipits – tiny, sparrow-sized migrants that arrived in our fields in the fall en route to their wintering grounds. They were Hudson Bay lowland breeders, and were quite at home in the ploughed fields, bobbing their tails almost constantly as they searched among the clods of overturned earth for morsels of food. I was always curious about everything I saw from the tractor seat and wasn’t content until I had pinned an identity on anything new that came along. It had to have a name. When I was barely 13, my father’s old army binoculars had already become an important item, wedged in the tool box with vice grips and screwdrivers. There were always a few plastic bags in there too, to store weeds until I had a chance to identify them once I got home. From the tractor seat to a Massey-Ferguson 300 self-propelled combine, my vantage point was now much higher, and I could enjoy the tree and barn swallows that swooped in front of me, snatching insects disturbed by the combining process. For two years, an albino tree swallow joined the feeding frenzy and made my days in the dust much shorter as I basked in their expert flight. Fall ploughing brought the gulls, and spring planting, the killdeers. During the haying season, it was the meadowlarks, the bobolinks and the savannah sparrows. I trace my eventual professional pursuit of nature back to a former elementary school teacher, Marie Foster, who made those last three years of public school, some of the most joyous in my youth. She was always pleasant and cheerful, and arrived at school with tales of birds feeding from her hand at her home only a few miles from where I lived. She made all subjects a joy to learn, but always came alive when teaching science. If only she were here today to see how her interest had influenced me to the extent that I made a career from interpreting nature on guided field hikes. My persistence in learning about nature is difficult to understand for there surely wasn’t the selection of field guides to help one in identifying those things around us that exists today. My only “field guide” was an old 1894 Birds of Ontario that had belonged to my grandfather which droned on endlessly about the author’s exploits in the field with his shotgun since collecting birds for verification purposes was the only way that new species made it to the Ontario checklist. Today, of course, this is no longer done, since powerful digital cameras and telephoto lens, and the acceptance of meticulous field notes describing a new observation, have replaced the need for physical evidence. Somehow, I persevered, and within a few years was introduced to the famous Peterson Field Guide series which used the process of elimination as a sure way to pin an identity quickly on a new bird. That process is still used today, and is the foundation of a bird identification course that I teach every year at this time, and which is always filled to capacity. Birding has certainly come a long way in the last 100 years. It now appeals to so many people, from backyard lookers to listeners, to listers and lifers who dart by jet all over the world, building up a life list of species they have seen. Back on the farm, and even pretty much today, I stayed away from frantic birding, commonly known in bird speak as “listhounding”, and preferred instead to spend as much time as I could with each species in an effort to increase my knowledge. I spent many an evening after milking the cows, just wandering back our lane and listening to the vesper sparrows sing in the evening. I watched and studied their singing habits and their nesting behaviour in the hay fields. I watched, amused, as they performed their distraction display whenever I accidently came across their nest on the ground. Individuals would spring from their nests and actually summersault along the surface of the ground, ultimately dropping into some tall grass where they would hide, hoping that their pursuer would be lured away from their nest. My parents enjoyed the presence of birds, too, but never really cared much for the blackbird clan. Red-winged blackbirds and grackles were always in the oats. In the fall, it was the rusty blackbirds that nested farther north, seemingly timing their migration on our farm to coincide with the ripening of the corn. House sparrows created an infernal din around the buildings as they tirelessly searched for any gleanings. It was difficult to extoll the benefits of birds when clouds of blackbirds descended from the skies and starlings painted our vehicles. Long before I even acquired any knowledge on ecology, biodiversity, the web of life, and the balance of nature, I knew that so-called bad birds had another side to them and that they were somehow interconnected and formed an important link in the natural scheme of things. There was more to their existence than an outdated Jack Minor attitude about good and bad birds, and that the bad birds must be destroyed. They had a purpose, and from the tractor seat, I watched as they gorged on insects and carried huge beakfuls of grubs and beetles to offspring far away. The farm was an outdoor classroom, beyond SS #14 Public School. It was in these same fields that I wrote about in my book, “Up Before Five – the Family Farm”, where I became motivated to learn about the natural world and how all living things depended on each other. The recollection of those days more than four decades ago are fond memories, and I am glad I never gave up my thirst for knowledge. It has led to an exciting career in the field of natural history that I have no plans of retiring from any time soon. If only Daniel Massey and Harry Ferguson could know how their tractor seats influenced my career. 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.