Learning About Birds From the Tractor Seat

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.