Ah the Joys of a Big Sit

Now that September is upon us, peregrinations are front of mind, the sort that occur annually at this time of year as birds that have raised broods in Canada—from our region of the country all the way to the faraway Arctic—decide it is time to head to wherever it is they like to make their winter home.

Once upon a time—oh, as long as four decades ago—I was a crazed practitioner of the birding Big Day wherein two or three keeners get together to see how many species they are able to find in  a given window of up to 24 hours. Hereabouts early May is a good time for a Big Day; so is early-mid September. The thing about a Big Day is that it is a very intensive, rushed affair not conducive to relaxation, peace, quiet and tranquility. 

Even as a young buck I was aware of an alternative to the Big Day, namely, the Big Sit, an option that involves no running-around at all, but a nice leisurely settling-in at some well-selected site, preferably in comfortable folding chairs, a lovely picnic lunch at hand, chilled beverages waiting in the cooler, all gathered at a site commanding excellent views over an area likely to be traversed by a variety of birds. Despite its manifest attractions I was never much drawn to the Big Sit when I was a young fellow. That has now changed.

Jan and I decided that a Big Sit was just the thing for a blithesome early September morning. We went to Tower Point which commands an expansive view over Juan de Fuca Strait all the way to the Olympic Mountains of Washington State. Jan decided it was a capital idea, one she bought into with extra fervor when I promised to make my world-renowned pesto sandwiches part of the deal.

We arrived at our destination a little past 8, pleased as usual to be greeted by a soundscape dominated by waves lapping at the rocky shoreline, Garry oaks soughing in a gentle breeze, harbour seals contentedly grunting from the islet just off the point. Human-made noise was happily absent. There were birds to see right off the bat—surfbirds and turnstones foraging for breakfast among the offshore rocks. Legions of gulls gathered too: old-reliable glaucous-winged gulls, even bigger numbers of a lovely gull whose numbers peak at this time of year, a species that for some reason always brings Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys to my mind—California gulls.

My better half and I were well equipped for observing birds and recording anything special that might fly into our view plane: two binoculars, spotting scope, two cameras. Off to the west we saw a crowd of gulls—two hundred or more—gathered on a sand bar at the entrance to winsome Witty's Lagoon. I turned the spotting scope to the sandbar, soon gathered that the majority of the gulls were Californias, the sort evoking Brian Wilson. 

Then I spotted something else, on the beach beyond the sandbar: naked women. Once upon a time, back when I was as hardcore a Big Day practitioner as ever was, I might easily have been distracted by women naturists assembled on a beach. It is perhaps a sad marker of how much has changed over the years that I was hardly distracted at all. No, there were birds to identify; I was bound and determined to identify them.

Our principal birding targets were phalaropes and jaegers—seagoing birds that provide the best, albeit rare, viewing possibilities at this time of year. Well, to kill the suspense, no, we saw no phalaropes. We saw no jaegers. We saw container ships pass slowly by, too distant to hear the thrum of the ships' engines. In the distance zodiacs packed with whale-watchers also raced past, everyone on board keen for close encounters with orcas, perhaps even a humpback. We saw no whales.

Onshore just behind us, there were landbirds to hear and see: a towhee here, nuthatch there, a warbler or two, a little gang of bushtits, a flicker. In the result we fell short of the hundred-plus count that might have once been assured in a September Big Day. We listed barely a couple dozen species. Feel no pity. The pesto sandwiches, washed down with herbal tea, were every bit as brilliant as promised. On the way back to the car we filled two containers with blackberries. The berries will provide the filling for the pie we'll share tomorrow evening with Jan's Dad. What could be finer? 

Despite the paucity of phalaropes and jaegers it was a Big Sit to remember. I can hardly wait for the next one.

 

 

Swimsuits Not Required

In 1722 Daniel Dafoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, published A Journal of the Plague Year, one man's account of the Great Plague of London which killed about a hundred thousand Londoners and others in 1665-66. Wikipedia tells us that Dafoe takes pains to achieve verisimilitude in his plague book, describing specific neighborhoods, streets, and even particular houses in which events took place. I admit to having never read Journal of the Plague Year. Perhaps this would be a good year to remedy that defect.

Our own pandemic of 2020 has turned the planet into a strange, unfamiliar world. But for CV-19 I would be in Cape Breton now, enjoying the woods of Boularderie Island, cataloguing the birds and wildflowers, trying in vain to persuade twin cousins Lynn and Louise to go for a skinny dip in my own private, perfect swimming hole.  But no, I am in BC rather than CB, striving to make the best of altered circumstances.

I find that in at least one way I have become a facsimile of my late, lamented mother. When I was young I never quite understood why dear old Mum put such a high premium on peace and quiet. I no longer wonder why. From the sleeping porch at Big Bras d'Or it is commonplace in the dead of night to hear barred owls and coyotes in conversation from somewhere in the upper reaches of Kelly's Mountain, five kilometres away. We get up in the morning to revel in the chorus of warblers singing from the woods just behind the cabin. At 'Bigador' there is plenty of  peace and quiet. Here in our no-longer-little city it often seems to me that there is none at all, so when Mary and Mike proposed that we join them in a longish hike to Sheilds Lake in the Sooke Hills, Jan and I said yes, please and thank you.

Monday was a glorious day for hiking a less-traveled wilderness route: sunny but not too warm, a gentle breeze producing what might be my favourite sound in nature: the soughing of wind in pines. Not spruces, not firs, not hemlocks produce the same sound. Only pines. On the way to Sheilds—no, that is not a misspelling, the lake is Sheilds, not Shields—there was plenty of p & q to value. In mid-August songbirds have mostly done their procreative duty and fallen silent: the woods are no longer alive with their urgent song, but we did hear a vocalizing pygmy owl and counted ourselves lucky.

August is not prime time for wildflowers either but a rattlesnake plantain here, king gentian or rein-orchid there provided sufficient opportunity to pause to take a picture and a legitimate excuse to catch my breath.

Our friends treated us to a 'lifer': a new-to-us, rough, untraveled route across a height of land to our target lake. Sheilds is sufficiently removed from any madding crowd that we had a reasonable prospect of having it to ourselves. And indeed we did. Sheilds was another 'lifer: a lovely good-sized lake festooned here and there with pink water lilies. Apart from a calling raven here, a sapsucker there, we were alone.

I am someone who tends to feel that getting dressed to go for a swim is just about as logical as doing so to take a bath or have a shower. If I have to swim with a cast of strangers, in a bathing suit, I typically conclude it is not worth the trouble. At Sheilds there were no strangers, no need for bathing suits. Like-minded friends are one of life's true treasures: all together we went for a lovely swim in the altogether. It was sublime.

Now I freely admit that deeply into my eighth decade I am no longer anything but an eyesore to anyone who might have been peeking from the woods but if friends are both like-minded and forgiving of deeply wrinkled, saggy skin, an old fellow is doubly blessed.

After relaxing swim and restorative lunch it might have been a downer to tear ourselves away from Sheilds but there was consolation: another lake on the way back, another swim for those needing a second cooldown.

None of us were in any hurry to get the day over with so by the time we'd tramped 14 km, climbed 430 metres or thereabouts, subjected our feet to 31,107 steps, nine hours had somehow slipped past. By then I was ready to call it a day. Wrinkles and sags notwithstanding I'm grateful I can still do such a thing.

A Little Cometary Perspective

In these Covid-deprived times our ability to embark on ambitious peregrinations is greatly stifled. We are encouraged to stay close to home, abjure crowded airplanes, keep our distance, and thereby hope to avoid emulating the unhappy fate of the six hundred thousand of our fellow humans who have already succumbed to the virus. At this time of year I would ordinarily be enveloped in the quiet, restorative delights of the woods of Big Bras d'Or, the wildflower-festooned trail to Dalem Lake, the vocal stylings of the Swainson's thrushes, black-throated green warblers and white-throated sparrows of Boularderie Island. Perhaps the pandemic will have abated enough to permit a return to Cape Breton in 2021. Perhaps not.

I am obliged to content myself with horizons reachable on foot from my James Bay door, by bicycle, or by a short drive in gasoline-powered conveyance. But these days—perhaps I should say nights—another sort of peregrination provides happy, contemplative distraction. I admit to being one among  my kind fascinated by comets. Yes, comets. I get excited whenever a new comet is discovered and I have the prospect of seeing it with my own septuagenarian eyes. In late March, on its journey to our corner of the solar system, a new comet was detected by a space telescope, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer absorbed in its Near-Earth Objects mission—NEOWISE for short. Comet Neowise has an alternate, even more prosaic moniker, C/2020 F3. I find neither name as evocative as the names Halley, Hale-Bopp or Hyakutake but that is a mere quibble. Any visible comet is a joy to behold, an inducement to contemplate our significance in the greater scheme of things.

Often dubbed "dirty snowballs", comets are typically made of dust, gas and the ionized gas the scientists call plasma. When invisibly minding their own business in the outer reaches of the solar system comets are very cold, something in the order of minus-220 Celsius, but as they approach the innermost zones of the solar system the surface temperature can shoot to an opposite extreme: heat measured in the millions of degrees. And that is when we humans get to see them: it is the heat of the sun and the solar wind that produce the comet's corona and the tail that extends as much as ten million kilometres.

A few nights ago Jan and I made our way in evening twilight to Highrock Park in Esquimalt to see the new comet. We were not alone: twenty or thirty others were also gathered at Highrock for the show. Neowise is a wee thing, a mere five kilometres in diameter, but even at a distance of a hundred million kilometres the corona and tail make it is easy enough to spot, especially if the observer is armed with a decent binocular. It was of course Jan, aka 'Hawkeye', who spotted it first. I managed to get a decent image of Neowise with my long-lens Sony.

One viewing was not enough. Last night we went out again. By 11 pm the summit of Victoria's Mount Tolmie was crowded with people and their vehicles, all gathered for the same purpose. Neowise once traveled at a sedate 3,200 kilometres/hour but the slingshot effect of the sun's gravity has increased the iceball's pace to 28,000 kph. That works out to about 7.78 kilometres a second, quite a bit faster than Usain Bolt in his prime. The comet will make its closest approach to Planet Earth July 22 by which time it will be a mere 103 million kilometres distant. You still have plenty of time to see it: take a bino to some location—the darker the better—with an open view to the northwest. I promise it will be easy enough to see.

Where is Neowise headed? Well, back to the Oort Cloud is the short answer: the far reaches of the solar system. Solar system distances are measured by the Astronomical Unit, the distance from the sun to our little planet, 152 million kilometres. At aphelion, the comet's greatest distance from the sun, Neowise will be in the order of 630 AU away from us. The comet will need a few thousand years to reach aphelion and commence its next circuit to the sun. For a sense of what 630 AU means consider this: Voyager 1, launched 43 years ago in 1977 and speeding along at 17 kilometres/second is now about 150 AU from its launch pad. When will we see this comet again? The experts tell us it will be 6,800 years before Neowise delivers a return engagement.

Neowise delivers a tonic over and above its fascinating bare facts: when a fellow is inclined to fret about the state of human affairs and the danger that Donald Trump might be reelected leader of the free world, the comet offers a little perspective.