Subject: no smew
Date: Nov 21 12:28:35 2001
From: Constance J. Sidles - csidles at mail.isomedia.com


Hey tweets, Last weekend I had finally got my husband to promise me that we
would stay in town to clean the house, clear out the gutters and otherwise
reverse the opinions of our neighbors that we are contributing to a loss in
their property values. Alas, early on Saturday morning I opened my e-mail
to read that a smew had been sighted on Vancouver Island near Comox.
Without wasting time, I woke up my sleepy husband and gave him the bad news
about the gutters and carpets and windows et al ("Darn," was his reply, "I
was really looking forward to cleaning." Yeah, right, now put me back on
the tomato truck that I just fell off of.) And so, smiling all the while
and feeling like kids sneaking away from school to play hookey, we set out.

The drive up was gorgeous. We even enjoyed the hour-long wait at the
border, made amusing by a white-haired old lady with BC plates but a
Chicago attitude. When the boys driving the car in front of her in line
stopped inching forward to let in an errant motorist from a defunct lane,
she began honking insistently at them. She kept honking until the bad car
had eased into line completely, a long process, as we were moving along no
faster than a slow slug on a foggy day. The woman stopped honking after the
bad car was no longer sticking out, at which point, she set her parking
brake, got on her broom and went flying up to the boys' window. There she
proceeded to read them the riot act, punctuating her remarks with numerous
stabs of a sharp-nailed finger. I'm sure the boys would have fled the scene
if they could, but there was nowhere to go. When she ran out of steam, she
climbed back in her car and rode the boys' tail all the way to the border.
And people ask why there aren't more Good Samaritans. Those boys may never
do another road kindess again. Or at least they'll think twice. As for us,
we could hardly stop laughing, although we were very glad her gimlet eyes
didn't light on us.

Anyway, we got up to the Comox area after dark and stayed in one of the
loveliest inns we've ever come upon, the Kingfisher. In the morning we
birded the bay from our window - no smews but plenty of other sea ducks.
Then we proceeded to bird slowly up and down the bay, as far as the ferry
at Comox and back again, up and back, up and...well, you get the picture.
No smew. It was one of those times when you begin to question whether you
really are the birder you thought you were. Luckily, toward the end of the
day on Sunday, we encountered two BC locals who said that the entire BC
birding community was combing the bay for 50 miles, and no one had spotted
the smew. I say "luckily" only because my bruised ego needed some help. We
actually would have preferred for anyone else to have seen it rather than
no one at all. At least then they could have led us by the hand to its
location.

Speaking of which, the two BC birders did tell us about a yellow-billed
loon that has been patrolling the ferry dock for two weeks now. "Just go to
the rusty white pipe near the over-flow parking lot and wait," they said.
"It will show up eventually." We had just birded that same area, and I
swear there was no yellow-billed loon. None. Really. No smew either. Anyway
we went back as directed, and sure enough, a spectacular yellow-billed loon
materialized from out of the black hole where many of my most-wanted birds
apparently live. It swam back and forth no more than 10 feet away, diving
for fish and floating around peacefully in the ferry's surge. A common loon
paddled around nearby for comparison. This yellow-billed loon was one of
those birds you see now and then that look exactly like the picture in
National Geo. It was beautiful.

Altogether we saw 54 species on our trip. Who cares about the yard when you
can have a weekend like ours? Be warned, however, if you decide to go up to
Canada. Coming back, the wait at the border was 3 hours, even though the
lines were short. Customs guys were opening every suitcase in every car,
and that just took a lot of time.-Connie, Seattle

csidles at mail.isomedia.com