Reflections of the Past Week

REFLECTIONS OF THE PAST WEEK
 May 31 & June 02

“Wasn’t that Sprague who just flew by in that Jeep Cherokee?”
“Think so. Saw him earlier this morning on Hilltop Road in the south part of the County. He was out measuring the water depth with a stick to make sure he could get through. Think he said he was after grasshopper sparrows, or somethin.”
Perhaps I should clear my name. I am not into “power birding,” that questionable practice among birders who wade through swamps, climb tall trees, trudge across barrens and paddle across lakes for “the list.” I am a passive, quiet birder who enjoys going for leisurely walks and spending 15 minutes or so, admiring an oriole building a nest, or studying some new feeding habit of a warbler that I have never before observed. For me, birds are not just a tick on the list in a never ending effort to beat some previous high number of bird species observed in one day. Instead, I yearn to learn. And I learned a lot about orchard orioles this year as I had a male serve as my alarm clock every morning from an apple tree near where my trailer was parked at Prince Edward Point from May 12^th to the 21st. I spent a considerable amount of time just basking in its rich colours and its vibrant song.
However, on May 16^th, I had over $1,600 and 65 sponsors riding on my ability to see as many species of birds as I could within a 24-hour period, in Prince Edward County. There was no time for insignificant interruptions such as lunch, Tim Horton’s, idle conversation or county speed limits. Time was of the essence, and in Prince Edward County, good birding areas are spaced many miles apart. For the bulk of my list I needed Prince Edward Point for the warblers, a flooded field along Bloomfield’s Wesley Acres Road for shorebirds and ducks, Sandbanks for the wetland birds, Bloomfield Marsh for the marsh birds, and Beaver Meadow for the wood ducks. Anything in between would be a bonus. My goal was at least 140 species if I was to equal the winners of last year’s competition who acquired that many in a 24-hour period. Getting them meant driving over 200 kilometres, and that knocks off a lot of time that could be spent looking and listening for new species.
My team, The Kentucky Warblers, at 131 species, lost by only six species, with this year’s winners getting 137 species. But we did walk away from the awards celebrations with our heads held high, knowing that we had generated the most revenue, thanks in no small part to the support of dozens of sponsors. But it was all in good fun, and for a good cause. The event is called the Baillie Birdathon, named after the late Jim Baillie who worked as Assistant Curator for over 50 years at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Although not formally educated in ornithology, his knowledge of birds was exceptional, and he willingly shared it with thousands of people, both amateurs and professionals, through newspaper columns, scientific publications, bird hikes and countless visitors to his office. His great enthusiasm and knowledge inspired hundreds of naturalists, even back when birdwatching was not the socially accepted pastime that it is today.
I had the pleasure of knowing Jim Baillie, and he was one of the first columnists I ever met when I first started writing a column for the Picton Gazette over 40 years ago. The Baillie Birdathon is a fundraiser, administered by Bird Studies Canada, and was established in 1976 in honour of this great man. Funds raised by participants support the work of Bird Studies Canada, designated bird observatories in the Canadian Migration Monitoring Network (Prince Edward Point Observatory is a member), and the James L. Baillie Memorial Fund, which provides research grants to amateur naturalists across Canada. In addition, a $1,000 award is given annually to a student conducting ornithological research at a Canadian university.
There were several teams this year, and collectively we raised over $10,000 for this year’s cause. The Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory will receive over $8,000 of that figure to continue their bird monitoring and banding at Prince Edward Point. Also in my team, was Don Craighead of Belleville, Serge de Sousa of the Jericho Road/Hwy 62 area, and Henri Garand of Big Island, and my heartfelt thanks to them for providing the extra sets of eyes needed to make this effort a success.
Prince Edward Point is located at the southeastern tip of Prince Edward County, and like Presqu’ile Park, is the first land mass that songbirds see, after migrating north in the spring across Lake Ontario. There are days when over 20 species of warblers can be seen in about an hour, and over 100 species of birds can be tallied in a day at this point of land that many locals call “the Point Pelee of eastern Lake Ontario.” It is also the home of the Prince Edward Point Observatory and banding station.
This week, many of those birds left, for the northern boreal forests where they will breed. They will arrive again in the fall, but it is May when birders down there bird fast, drive hard and gaze into the treetops in anticipation of a new species on their list. And this spring did not disappoint.