The cast of characters:
The Leader
The Roommate
The Plant Expert
The Chauffeur and his wife, The Tea Maker
The Map Reader
The Limping Man and his wife, The Golfer
This trip to Pelee started back in March when we were on a Kawartha Field Naturalists’ outing to Presqu’ile. The leader of that trip mentioned that he was going to Pelee and there was a motel that he used that was clean and had reasonable rates. I was all excited that a trip to Pelee might be planned but no one that I asked was interested or available to go with me.
At a later KFN meeting, our Leader announced that he was planning to go to Pelee and anyone who was interested could join him. At that point I had given up on going, not being able to afford to pay for a room all by myself.
Then we had the KFN annual general meeting at the end of April. I learned that many others were now going on the trip and I spent much of the meeting trying to figure out how I could afford to go as well. I’d been offered a ride but the motel was the stumbling block. Everyone already had a roommate; I still couldn’t afford a room by myself.
On the drive home from the meeting, I realized that I had just spent over two hours trying to figure out how to go on this trip. It dawned on me that, if I had spent this much time working on it, then I should just blow the budget and go. The very next day, I called the motel to book a room and I contacted The Chauffeur to see if there was still room for me in his vehicle.
Just prior to the trip, The Roommate contacted me to say that her husband could not make it and was I interested in sharing a room. Was I!! It was all falling into place.
Excitement was building.
On Tuesday morning, I packed my goodies into the car and headed on down to The Chauffeur’s house. From there, we went down to Lindsay to pick up The Map Reader. Several hours later (are we there yet?) we stopped at a Tim Horton’s for a bathroom break and a tea. And that is when I knew that the trip was going to be a great one!
We spent most of that stop laughing!
Finally we arrived in Leamington and checked into our rooms. The Leader’s carload had arrived earlier and spent the afternoon at Hillman’s Marsh. That’s where we were heading now.
We spent a couple of hours there, figuring out how to identify the different shorebirds that were there. At one point, The Plant Expert wanted to see a semipalmated sandpiper so I started pointing one out. Unfortunately, I was leading him to the semipalmated plover. Ooops! We laughed.
We stopped near the parking lot to examine the bumble bees that were every where on the wooden buildings. Finally, The Plant Expert identified them not as bumble bees but as carpenter bees and we discussed their bare bums.
Back at the motel, we gathered in front of the room of The Chauffeur and The Tea Maker, pulling chairs over and opening wine and beer for our first tailgate party. I cannot describe just how wonderful it was. I’ve always wanted to take part in one but was usually the one with the room on another floor who never heard that a get-together was planned. I truly felt as though I belonged and it felt great!
Where does the prothonotary warbler get its name? The Golfer had a wonderful little book on warblers and informed us that the name referred to the special religious scribes who wore yellow hoods. This bird was the only one I absolutely HAD to see in Pelee. All else would be gravy......and there was a lot of very good gravy to be had.
During this tailgate party, we realized that we actually had a quorum for a KFN directors’ meeting so we made some changes to the club. Just wait until the next directors’ meeting....it’s gonna be fun. We laughed.
After dinner that first night, we all headed to our rooms. It was like the bedtime scene on The Waltons with everyone calling good night to everyone else. On the second night, we were too tired and went to our rooms in silence.
Inside the room, The Roommate explained that she needed a lot of time to get ready in the morning so an alarm was set. When she saw that I had already set aside everything I would need in the morning, she fretted and got herself ready too. Our preparations made us hot, particularly as the thermostat in the room indicated that the temperature was 77 degrees. Fortunately, the roommate also prefers a cold room for sleeping so we set the air conditioning to 60 degrees. In the meantime, we stripped off the bedcovers and blankets on our respective beds and settled in under the flimsy sheet.
I thought that we would read for a little and then go to sleep but we ended up talking for a couple of hours. It was a real bonding experience and I thank my roommate for that.
During the night, the temperature in the room dropped and kept dropping. First I pulled up the blanket. Then up came the bed cover. It was chilly!
By morning, the temperature had dropped to 59 degrees. Now that was cold!
The Roommate got up before the alarm which had been set for 6:20. By 6:40 she was proudly ready to go. Well, we were both ready, but it was nearly an hour earlier than we needed to be. We laughed.
Down to the restaurant for breakfast. The Plant Expert who claims that he has trouble with words couldn’t remember if the eggs he wanted were easy over or over easy. The Chauffeur made a happy face of his sunny side up eggs and hashbrowns. We laughed.
The Leader had already been out for coffee and was feeling good. On the second morning, he didn’t and a whole new side of him showed up. He really did need that coffee to get him going.
We had a disappointing start on Wednesday. The day was overcast and it began to rain on the way to the Park. We took the tram towards The Tip and then walked the rest of the way. Few birds were found and it was chilly. This was the start of our visit to Pelee and we wondered what all the big fuss was about.
As we trudged back from The Tip, The Plant Expert showed us various plants to make up for the lack of birds. Then we arrived at the tram turnaround circle and the glory of Pelee came into effect. The number of birds was almost overwhelming.
We were a relaxed group. There was no rigid maintaining of the larger group. Instead, over the day, we kept breaking up into smaller groups which would, without planning, come back together again and then break up into different groups. The ease with which we did this was miraculous.
At one point, I was looking at a bird and trying to describe it to The Leader who, we thought, was looking at the same bird. It has an eye ring......No it doesn’t. Look at those two distinct wing bars. I couldn’t see any wing bars. It took some time before we realized that we were actually looking at two different birds. We laughed.
I first started birding when I lived in Ottawa in the early 90's and discovered the warbler mecca called Mud Lake. It’s at the Britannia Filtration Plant and I spent many hours there alone and with groups led by the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club. There I learned about warbler neck. You get warbler neck by spending hours looking up at the tops of the trees trying to find that elusive warbler. Many of the others in our group hadn’t heard of the term before and.......we laughed.
Later, The Plant Expert pointed out a large sycamore tree. We had to take a picture of him hugging it to show how large it was and then another picture of The Tea Maker and The Plant Expert not being able to wrap their arms fully around the circumference of the tree. We laughed.
Another time, The Chauffeur came back to me to say that he was confused with all the orioles. We had seen the very orange male and the yellow female. But he had seen one that was a different colour. When I showed him a picture of an orchard oriole, he pumped his fist in the air, proud of himself for having a) seen his first orchard oriole and b) for having picked up that it was a different bird.
It was a long trip back up the tram route. At one point, the tram came along so we stuck out our thumbs but it drove right on past. Sore feet and parched throats didn’t appreciate the neglect. We did not laugh. Later we learned that the tram could stop only at the assigned stop.
In the afternoon we took the tram down to the halfway point and headed along the trail where the prothonotary warblers were being seen. It took a little looking - I missed the first sighting - but eventually we all got good looks at the pair which appeared to be nest building. My trip was made.
That night, we went out to the chinese restaurant for dinner. The placemats listed the animals of the chinese horoscope and we all identified what animal we were. We had three rats, a horse and a tiger but the rest I don’t remember. We fell silent when the food arrived, hungry after a long day of birding. And then we laughed, particularly when The Leader starting rolling out the puns.
The next morning, the three carloads took their separate routes. One left early in the morning in order to get back in time for a golf game in the afternoon. The Leader took his crew to Rondeau Provincial Park and our vehicle went back to Pelee to check out the boardwalk. There we were thrilled to see black terns almost close enough to touch. One poor male arrived to give his potential mate a lovely silvery fish but she was having nothing of it. Time and again he tried to give it to her and she kept turning away from him. Frustrated, he flew off, circled the marsh a couple of times and returned to her. She continued to ignore him. Eventually, he flew off and dropped the fish then returned and settled into the nest that she had been working on. A little housekeeping would surely do the trick. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay long enough to see this relationship reach its conclusion but I’m hoping for good things for this male.
The drive home was a long one. We were all tired. At one point, we noticed The Leader’s car blow by us about 40 kph faster than we were going. The Plant Expert was fast asleep in back seat and The Roommate looked on the edge of unconsciousness in the front seat.
Through superb decision making by The Chauffeur, we made it through the Toronto rush hour traffic without being held up. When we exited the 407 though, the traffic was building up at the lights and stop signs. The tailbacks, as The Tea Maker called them, were going to seriously impede our arrival home. Then The Map Reader took control of the map and led us through the countryside, taking back roads which bypassed the traffic and got us back without much further delay.
The trip to Pelee was over. Before the trip, I had claimed that it would probably be a one-time event for me. I wanted to experience Pelee in the spring but figured I would hate the crowds of people so much that I would never want to go back. Well, the trip for next year has already been discussed.
If it is half as good as this one was, it too will be a good one.
Other Memories:
- handdryer at Tim Horton’s
- no Boston cream donuts “What sort of a country is this?”
- The Tea Maker using the camp stove to boil water for tea
- assigning deduction marks to The Leader for the weather
- The Limping Man suffering in silence and keeping up despite having gout
- The Leader’s rule - if you hear it, you can’t count it until you see it; which then became if you see it, you can’t count it until you hear it
- The Roommate was so cold before bed on the second night that she had to have a hot shower
- lining up the dead soldiers (empty beer and wine bottles) and taking photos of the group sitting proudly behind this extensive display.
- The Tea Maker breaking her reading glasses and The Limping Man finding a spare pair in his pocket and giving them to her
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