I call them "lawn mower birds". They have nothing to do with lawn mowers, of course. They don't even have much to do with grass -- certainly nothing to do with the kind of grass that one finds on an urban lawn.
But they make their appearance every spring at precisely the same moment that lawn mowers awake from their winter hibernation.
Some say that wood-warblers follow insects. They say that as spring pushes winter north, the sun's rays warm the earth and insects begin to fly. Warblers, they say, follow this shifting boundary of emerging protein northward to their mating grounds.
I suspect that they are right. Although I sometimes wonder. The first growls of early lawn mowers certainly catch my attention in the spring. If I were a warbler, that sound alone might be sufficient to call me north to my breeding grounds.
But I am not a warbler. I am a warbler watcher. And I am a warbler gardener.
I have a pond in the front garden and a sunken birdbath -- not quite large enough to be called a pond -- in the back garden. Over the past three years I have completely rebuilt both gardens to attract more warblers.
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Where I once had naked lawn, I now have more than two dozen trees and shrubs (all from the prune family) whose fruit will attract insects who are themselves attractive to hungry warblers.
To those who suggest (as does my wife from time to time) that my fascination borders on obsession, I simply point out that I have yet to hop in a car and drive to Cold Lake simply to see some the of the half dozen "rare" warbler species who are almost never seen in this part of the province.
This, I guess, is what separates bird watchers from bird gardeners. There is no distance an obsessed warbler watcher will not travel to see Alberta's first Hooded Warbler or Weaselhead's only Kentucky Warbler. Five hours in the car for an eight-second peek of a lifetime.
Bird gardeners are not nearly so impatient. We plant. We grow. We watch and we wait.
Spring comes and so do the warblers. The blue-greys, vivid yellows and olive greens of the spring regulars. The blacks and whites of the Black-and-Whites. The bold dark eye lines of the Tennessee Warblers, hanging bat-like from the undersides of spruce boughs.
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Each warbler species passes through our garden in its turn. Each in breeding plumage for the only time this year. Each wonderful and familiar to anyone with an eye for natural history.
And then it happens. Something new and unexpected. A sudden flash of colour not quite right. Not exactly familiar.
No sooner are the binoculars to our eyes than we see an amazing sight. A bird so stunning, an exotic vagrant so far from its native range that bird watchers come from miles around and talk for many years.
And for our list, one special moment, one special bird, that may never come to share our garden again.
© Brent Johner. Originally published in Calgary Gardening, May 2006. Reprint rights available. $9.95 CDN. Non-exclusive.
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