Kirtland's Warbler

My father was a man who took his hobbies seriously. Within each of his hobbies came another hobby entirely. This hobby was a hobby that he was far more passionate about than all of the other hobbies combined. This hobby was the collection of gear. For instance, when it came to golf, my father did not just have a set of clubs and a bag. This wire-haired, 62 year old, gentle giant had the clubs, the bag, the towel, the tees, the training devices, the shirts, shorts, the pants, the hats, the magazines, and even the quirky Nicole Miller golf ties of golfers putting and driving to go along with the game. When he decided to learn to fly fish, he didn’t purchase a cheap rod and reel and a couple of dry flies to test the waters before jumping into the river. He bought the best rod, reel, wet flies, dry flies, boxes for the wet flies, boxes for the dry flies, clippers, waders, pliers, vests, nets, leaders, line, tippet, books, maps, and of course the fancy Nicole Miller ties depicting various fly fishermen at different stages of the fly fishing process, that money could buy. His attitude was that as long as you look as though know what you are doing, everything else would fall into place accordingly.

Being a man whose hobbies placed him in the loving arms of Mother Nature, and also being a man who enjoyed hobbies within hobbies, no one was surprised when he decided to take up birdwatching. This quirky activity could be done between shots while walking from hole to hole on the golf course or in between casts on the banks of a river on a slow fishing day. It could even be done while working in the backyard, another hobby of my fathers, but one that he enjoyed far less. My father was the only man who would go waste deep into river with a pair of heavy, cumbersome binoculars draped around his neck. He was also the only person on the golf course who would stop at the slightest chirp, and peer into a bush and whistle at it, in hopes of coaxing out a sparrow or junko that had he seen taking refuge in it’s branches.

The plus side of being my fathers son was that when he picked up a new hobby, I picked up a new hobby as well, and by picking up the hobby, I mean each Christmas, amongst the various clothing items and electronics that I had asked for would also be a new fly rod and reel or a pair of binoculars. These gifts ultimately became the bridge between my father and me in my early childhood. Whether I was in my angry poet phase of life or my tennis phase, we always found commonality in nature and fishing, which also meant bird watching.

Each winter we would take a trip to Eastern Oklahoma to Beavers Bend State Park on the Mountain Fork River, where we would put on our vests and our waders and make our way into the frigid river waters. It would never occur to my father to spend a penny for a guide when all we really needed to do was to read a book, watch a video, and practice a couple of casts in the front yard. After only ten minutes but what seemed like hours, we shivered, seconds away from hypothermia, each waiting for the other to cry Uncle and head in to the comfort of a warm fire in our cabin which was tucked just off the river in a patch of cedar trees. Though at the age of 17, it was impossible to find joy in the simplicity of something as seemingly inconsequential as a bird, I couldn’t help but be in awe as a bald eagle traced the bank of the river until it vanished from site. As though a sign from God, we decided that instead of a rainbow trout, the balding eagle sighting would be our prize.

One evening on our porch in Northern Michigan, my father suggested that the two of us take a day trip to the Sturgeon River. A river made famous by Hemingway and his character Nick Adams for its multitudes of rainbow and brown trout. After the multiple fishless trips to the Maple River, a river with an abundance of fish was a welcome relief.

It was this same evening that my dad mentioned the Kirtland’s Warbler. This bird was amongst the most endangered animals on the planet. It was a small yellow bird, about the size of a sparrow. It lived primarily in the Caribbean, but annually it would migrate half way across the United States to a small patch of land off the Au Sable River in Central Michigan. A prime spotting for any birdwatcher. He suggested that we stop along the way and see if we could spot this rare bird before hitting the river. Being eager to fish, I obliged.

We woke up early the next morning and loaded our waders, fly rods, reels, vests, etc., and headed south. After a three-hour drive and a Subway sandwich, we exited the highway about ten miles North of where the river was. We headed down a dirt road, which led to the rare birds breeding ground. As we drew nearer to where the bird resided, the signs on the dirt road began to resemble what one would expect as one came close to a nuclear bomb facility or Area 51. A high barbed wire fence ran along side the road and every fifty feet, yellow signs with black lettering warned that we were in a protected breeding area for an endangered species. Also lining the road were an eclectic group of RV driving bird watchers, eager to catch a peak at this rare gem. These individuals ranged from rugged outdoor environmentalists to retired couples traveling state-to-state setting out to see as many birds as possible.

We parked our car and the wait was on. My father told me that we would know the bird because unlike other warblers, this one had a broken ring around its eye. I eagerly pointed out each bird I saw, convinced that it couldn’t be that difficult to find and as soon as we found it I would be off and doing what I wanted to do. As I looked closer I realized that this was going to be more difficult than originally planned. An older couple joined us and immediately my father and a retired man from North Carolina began swapping birding stories like old soldiers talk about World War II. It was rare for my father to find such commonality among people with this interest and he was truly in his element. He told this man about how when I was a child we would go search for the painted bunting on Saturday afternoons and once a year we would take trips to Arkansas to search for warblers and waterfowl. He re-told these stories with great fondness. Meanwhile, I sat and listened indifferently, my boredom turning from indifference to frustration.

As the sun grew higher, my ability to fake interest began to weaken. We were losing daylight and that meant that I was losing fishing time. Clouds began to move in a bit as it grew close to 3pm and then suddenly on a telephone wire appeared a small yellow bird. I pointed it out with newfound selfish enthusiasm. Everyone pulled out their binoculars and tried to get an eye on it. As my binoculars began to come into focus, the little bird flew away as quickly as it arrived.
“That was it! Now lets go!” I exclaimed, desperate to get on the road. I could tell by the look in my father’s eye, he wasn’t convinced.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive!” I lied.
“I didnt see it,” he said. “It doesn’t count.”
“Count?!?” I exclaimed. “Of course it does!”
“Lets see if it pops up one more time,” he said.
“Of course it counts!” I whined selfishly in front of his new group of friends. “I saw the stupid thing! It had a broken ring around its eyes. Now lets go!” I could see the disappointment in my Dad’s face. “Okay. Lets go,” he said. With that he bid his new friends farewell and got into the car.

As I digested his final words, it occurred to me how important this rare bird was to him. It was something that may well have been a once in a lifetime experience and I was too selfish to let him enjoy it. My father had done nothing but talk about how much he loved birdwatching and how much he loved spending time with me and I had embarrassed him. I had let him down. All of the sudden I wanted to go back. Maybe I didn’t see the broken ring after all! I said, now desperate to return but it was too late. All at once I wanted nothing more in the entire world than to help him find this rare bird. “It’s alright,” he said and continued to drive to the river. Seriously! We can find it! I pleaded. But it was too late. We were gone, as was his opportunity to see this rare beautiful bird.

As we arrived to the river, I put on my waders and headed out. A blanket of rain clouds had covered the sky and it was beginning to drizzle. I cast up stream and watched a couple of muskrat play, barely aware that my fly was about to get caught in some brush. All I had wanted that day was to fish and now all I could think about was that he hadn’t found that bird. That we had not found that bird. I optimistically scanned the tree line in hopes that perhaps one of the little yellow birds had gotten lost, but it never came. Soon the drizzle turned to rain, Thunder rolled in the distance and finally we decided to head home. It had been a long day. We got into the car, fishless. Sorry we didn’t catch anything, my dad said.

As we drove silently, I looked at this happy wiry haired man and thought of all the fishing trips we had been on and all the birds we had seen in the process. I thought back to the bald eagle soaring along the banks of the river in Oklahoma and the joy it had brought to both of us. I thought back to Kingfishers on farm ponds in Oklahoma and Mississippi Kites on the lakes at the OKC Golf Course. I thought about how much a part of my childhood my fathers hobby within a hobby was and how important those memories were to me. I didn’t remember the fish we caught on any of those trips. I remembered something more. I remembered the birds we had seen and the joy my father took in pointing them out to me. This had been just another fishing trip but somehow this one was different. On this one we had set out to see something that may never be seen again. Only this time we didn’t see the bird and it was my fault. For a long while we drove home in silence, my mind still back on that dirt road. “We’ll see that bird next year,” I managed to say over the lump in my throat. We kept driving.