Category: birding

Eating (semi)well on the road.

April 9, 2016

We’ve just returned from a two-week road trip through California and southern Arizona, a trip booked long before the idea of buying a new house entered our minds. Nothing was going to happen with the house purchase in those weeks anyway, so there was no reason not to go.

Since the days of our six-and-seven week road trips, where we mostly camped, took a cooler with us, and bought groceries, several things have changed. One, of course, is that we were flying and renting a car. Secondly – and most importantly – are the food allergies/sensitivities BD has developed. It’s really difficult to find food he can eat, and even more difficult to find restaurants he can eat at. His allergy is to a specific fatty acid – lauric acid – which is found in red meats, most fats, coconut and palm products, all dairy, and some spices. It makes him break out in hives, big nasty hives which even extra-strength Benadryl only somewhat controls. So we need to be very careful about what he eats.

We could have bought a cooler in California, shopped for groceries, and eaten at parks and picnic stops. But there were a couple of strikes against this: one is that, for the most part, it was too cold to do this comfortably – we had snow in the foothills in Arizona! – and the second strike was just that we wanted more ease. We’ve done our share – more than our share – of eating in wind, rain, cold, searing heat and annoying insects, or perched on the side of the bed in a hotel room. Frankly, I’ve had enough of that.

Subway is one chain we know is safe for BD, if he sticks to chicken or turkey, but a constant diet of Subway grows old quickly, plus the sodium content is pretty high. We decided to try Denny’s, the classic diner chain: their available nutrition information is good, and they have something extremely difficult to find in US restaurant chains: reasonably sized meals, if you order carefully.

For dinners, we mostly stuck to the 55+ meals, eating a salad (with no cheese or dressing for BD), fish or chicken with broccoli and another vegetable – corn for me, squash for BD – every night. With unsweetened iced tea, the calorie count was around 650, the sodium, fat, and sugar content low for restaurant food, and there was nothing in the spices or preparation that triggered BD’s allergies. Breakfasts were fairly easy too: ordering a la carte, BD ate poached eggs on dry toast, oatmeal, and fresh fruit every morning; I had the same, or sometimes yogurt instead of the oatmeal. Again, the meals ran in the 650 calorie range, and it was easy to avoid the dairy and oil that would have been a problem. And we both appreciated comfortable booths and table service, especially after a long day, and in the morning when I’m not human before that first coffee.

It was also quite a bit of food. Neither of us were terribly hungry at lunch time, even after hikes of several hours most days. We’d found an energy bar by KIND that BD could eat without problems, so lunches tended to be an energy bar and an apple. BD would add a handful or almonds or peanuts; I’d add a latte if there was one to be had. If we walked a lot, sometimes we had a second energy bar, or more nuts.

Not every meal was eaten at Denny’s or Subway. We ate a couple of breakfasts at little cafes at Morro Bay and Cayucas. We drove to Oxnard (twice) specifically for fish and chips at Sea Fresh, which fries in peanut oil (BD had a double order of chips, it was such a treat.) Only something at Olive Garden triggered any reaction in BD, and it was mild, so a trace of oil or spice, most likely.

I celebrated my 58th birthday while on this trip. We debated a special dinner, but I didn’t particularly want that: what I did want was ice cream, as it was an unseasonably hot day (the only one of the trip) at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco. I usually avoid eating ice cream in front of BD – it seems cruel, when he can’t eat it any more – but I made an exception for my birthday. And in the little general store in Inverness, California, not only did I find my favourite Haagen-Daas chocolate-coffee-almond bar, but a lime gelato bar with no dairy that BD could eat (and he loves lime). We sat at a picnic table overlooking the bay and ate our treats, enjoying every frozen bite.

We were pleased with the trip – not only did we find the two birds we went to see around San Francisco, ones that have been eluding us for thirty years (because they are found by call, and they only call during breeding season, and that was always while we were working) – but we ate fairly nutritious food and didn’t trigger BD’s allergies. We went for long walks, watched dolphins and sea otters and seals along Highway 1, heard coyotes singing in the dusk at Yuma and watched the sun rise over the mountains. A good holiday. Now back to the realities of packing up this house for the move. Stay tuned!

The Moving Diary: the preface.

March 24, 2016

I’ve started to plan the packing. We’ll have both houses for a while, so we’re not pressed for time – yet I know that if I don’t have a plan, chaos will take over.

This is what I’m planning. I want to go through each room in this house to do two things: cull unwanted items, for donation or for landfill, and pack up things not needed immediately: winter clothes, books, rarely-used kitchen equipment, ornaments. That should take about three weeks of intermittent work, the time ranging from a couple of hours at the most for the bathroom to six-to-eight hours for the kitchen. We can get most of that done before the possession date of April 29th. In much of May, when the new house is having its gas fireplace installed, and the interior painted, I’ll need to be there to let the workers in and out and answer questions. I can take a carload of boxed items over every day; they can sit in the garage if nowhere else, while I ensure cupboards are clean and determine what goes where in the kitchen.

After that, we’ll spend a day packing the last of the fragile items, move the cats to the new house – they can have the run of the basement – and let the professionals take over. We have detailed floor plans of the new house and have spent the last couple of weeks playing with furniture placements. We may move things a few inches here and there, but basically we know what is going where, which will be easier for the movers. We’ll have those plans with us, printed and on our ipads, the day of the move.

I’m making lists: we need boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape, scotch tape. I’ll need to contact the charity that will come to pick up the boxes of donated items, saving me endless trips to their drop-off location. I have to book a mover, arrange another viewing of the house to measure windows for blinds, look at kitchen cupboard size and arrangements, and think about paint colours. Then arrange to meet with the gas-fireplace installers and the painters. And all the hundred other little things – the utilities, the change-of-addresses, the insurance – at least we’ll be keeping our cell phone numbers.

You’ll note I haven’t even begun to think about prepping this current house for sale. We decided we wouldn’t do that yet. We can afford, thank goodness, to carry both for a while. It will cost us a bit in the bridge financing, but it will be worth it in reduced stress. When this one is empty, it too can be cleaned and patched-painted-and-polished. I’m not going to try to do both at the same time. Because, among other things, this is all happening in May. Migration month. The best birding of the entire year. We bought a house expressly because it adjoins excellent birding habitat: we can walk out the front door into an area with an impressive migration bird list. We don’t plan to miss May birding, moving or no – it’s just a compromise: birding in the early mornings, moving chores later in the day.

We figure we can just about handle birding, new-house-prep, and old-house-cull-and-pack (although we’re going to try to do most of that in April)  in that time but we can’t add any more. Meals may be a bit ad hoc, laundry will get done at odd hours, and I certainly won’t get much writing done. Organized chaos is the best I can hope for.

Tell me about your moving experiences…what lessons can you pass on? Am I completely crazy?

Adjustments

January 9, 2016

We landed at Heathrow about 8:45 on Wednesday morning. Thanks to e-passport readers, we were through immigration in about five minutes, picked up the bags with a two-minute wait, and waited perhaps ten minutes for the bus to the car rental location. Another fifteen minutes and some paperwork, and we were on the road.

We’ve done this so many times. Forty minutes or so north-and-and east on the M25, the London Orbital, and off the motorway at South Mimms for coffee and breakfast at the services there. Back to the motorway for a short time, and then swing north on the M11, then the A11, then the A1065 and the B1112 to Lakenheath RSPB Reserve by late morning.

Here we’ll walk for a couple of hours, shoving North American birds to the back of our brains and retrieving the British ones. So many adjustments these first few days: the birds, the money, the side of the road to drive on (BD is expert at this, whereas it takes me a few days); names of things, behaviours. We finish our walk, eat our lunch, and make the last leg of the journey, an hour or so into the village and our little rented bungalow, home for the next two months. We retrieve the keys from the lockbox, open the front door, say hello to the house. Back out for quick shop for enough food for dinner and breakfast; tomorrow we’ll do a proper shop. Jet lag is kicking in, but the house is familiar; there are no surprises here. We know where everything is in the kitchen and how the stove works.

Am I home? Or am I home in Canada? We’ve lived with this duality all our lives: two citizenships, two passports, two countries to call home. I’ve stopped trying to answer that question, because both places feel like home, in different ways. Our families’ roots are deep here, shallow in Canada; our personal roots are deeper in Canada, shallower but getting deeper every year here. Unlike for some people with dual citizenship, there isn’t a deep moral choice to be made: both countries are democracies, both have universal human rights, universal health care and reasonable social support. Canada has better state-funded schools, probably. Britain has better public access to land for walking. Small differences, those last two, but huge for us. We preferred our teaching careers to be in Canadian schools; we prefer the access to the countryside here. And that no-one thinks birders are odd. And the weather: it was -18 C the morning of the day we left Canada. It’s 8 degrees C here.

Our life is smaller here. The bungalow is much smaller than our house. We have only one car. We shop more often, because the fridge is half the size of the one in Canada. All of this is ok. There’s a good library, a good butcher with local meats and game, a good little grocery store. The market town ten minutes away has everything else we need.

So, yes, I’m home. (Except I miss the cats, but they are being well taken care of by our long-term house/cat sitter.) I can love two countries: I loved both my parents, after all. It’s pretty much the same thing.

Fall Migration

September 29, 2015

Late yesterday afternoon I walked at Point Pelee National Park in southern Ontario. Known world-wide as a birding mecca in the spring, it’s quieter in the fall, although migrants still pass through. Yesterday it was blue jays, in the thousands, and in two – or perhaps three – layers. The highest birds were flying south, towards the tip of the sandspit that is Point Pelee, jutting out into Lake Erie. From here – or to here, in the spring – birds can fly over the the lake, never too far from land, following the point and then the islands – Pelee, Middle, – to the other shore. It’s why it’s such a hotspot for birding, the first landfall for tired birds making the long trek across the lake.

But jays don’t like to fly over water, so the waves of birds fly south, see the water, and turn back, to follow the shoreline around to the west and cross the Detroit River.So the second layer of jays, lower than the southbound birds, is flying north. There are so many birds the skies look like Toronto highways in rush hour, except the birds are moving faster.

The third layer of birds are those that have dropped down to tree height to feed. Migration needs energy, and the woods are full of jays seeking any source of energy they can find. Like all corvids (the crow family) blue jays are omnivores, and dragonflies, migrating monarchs, other insects, berries, – just about anything edible – will provide fuel for this long flight.

Other than the jays, the park is quiet. A few cyclists on the empty roads, a few other walkers, no other birders late in the afternoon. I don’t think I have ever been here on a weekday afternoon in September, although I have been walking these trails since I could toddle. I grew up close by, and the park was a frequent Sunday afternoon destination for our family.

Here, too, I brought BD when he first started to make the long trek from Toronto to my childhood home to see me the first summers we were going out, and, perhaps most importantly of all, it was here I introduced him to birding.  I’d been a casual birder since earliest childhood, identifying the birds of woodland and fields from a children’s bird-book, part of learning my world, along with trees and wildflowers and insects and rocks. One May afternoon  – probably Mother’s Day weekend – as we walked along the west beach trail, BD said “What are all those people looking at?” “Birds,” I answered, and pointed out in quick succession a yellow warbler and a Baltimore Oriole.  One casual question, an equally casual response – and our lives changed forever.

We learned to bird properly in the early 80s, taught in the field by the companionship, generosity, and good nature of some of the top Ontario birders. It’s been a passion ever since, although what that looks like changes with time. We no longer come to Pelee in the spring: the long drive, crowds, and the too-competitive nature of some birders (and the disregard for the fragility of the ecosystem by some bird photographers) has kept us away. We’ve evolved now into patch-watchers, birding our own local area and watching and recording the seasonal and yearly changes – the return of ravens and sandhill cranes, the increase in red-bellied woodpeckers, the disappearance of house sparrows. It’s a way of birding I prefer: not a competition, but a study, deepening our understanding of where we live, of our world. And as much of it is done on foot, or after a very short drive, it’s more sustainable.

But it’s good to come back to a place that nurtured and nourished us as beginner birders all those years ago. At every turn of the trail memories of what we saw there – a screech owl in that clump of cedars,the red-headed woodpeckers on that snag, the northern waterthrush in this swamp – come back to me.  A passion born on these trails has taken us to seven continents, to places in China and India and Tibet that most Westerners never see, and given us friends and contacts around the world.

Like these north-flying jays, we’re looking now for easier ways to do things.  Long trips over water are no longer as appealing as they once were, and moving to warmer climates for the winter holds great attraction.  But as long as there are trails to walk, birds to watch, and a place to hang a feeder or two, we’ll be fine.