More proof that Vancouver really is for the birds

I spent much of my weekend this past week involved in birding activities.

I spotted this spotted towhee during my "big day" count.

Yeah, I know. That's not really anything new. I spend a lot of my free time birding, or taking adventures that involve some element of seeing or watching wild birds (when I'm not paddling...and the two often intertwine).

However... this time, my activity included my own personal involvement in one of the many events taking place as part of the 2016 Vancouver Bird Week.

This event has been taking place for four years now, and offers activities for all who are interested in birds, whether it's a casual interest, an avid passion, or anywhere in between.

The event has a theme and an official "city bird." This year, the peregrine falcon was the official bird of Vancouver Bird Week. The theme was "Birds in Our Garden."

I first heard of this annual celebration last year, just after it had wrapped up, via social media. This year, I was a bit more prepared, but still was not able to take part in as many activities as I would liked to have done.

The events ran from May 7 to 14, and included bird photography classes (outdoors, of course), guided bird walks in many of the Vancouver city parks and some regional parks in the Metro Vancouver area, birding for beginners workshops, a movie, a book launch, a special birding tour of Howe Sound, and a "big day" of birding, on May 14, which just happened to be International Migratory Bird Day. To take part in this,  participants went out and about, in and around Vancouver and tallied all the different bird species they saw.

 Mallard ducklings on Avalon Pond in Everett Crowley Park, Vancouver.

These tallies were then presented in the Vancouver Public Library's central branch Alice MacKay Room, at the Bird Week Finale ... which also marked the launch of a new book - or rather, a revised edition of The Birder's Guide to Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, produced by Nature Vancouver.

Following some speeches and presentations, there were several draws for prizes that included books, bird-friendly coffee, wine, cloth tote bags, and a spotting scope donated very generously by Bird Studies Canada.

Some nice draw prizes were handed out at the finale.

But wait - there's more...

This isn't news, but more of a reminder.

Rob Butler - the man who led the sea safari in Howe Sound - talked about how Vancouver will host the 2018 International Ornithological Congress.

This is a huge "feather in the cap" (pun intended!) not only for the birders here but for the entire city. Vancouver outbid everyone else for this event, which only takes place once every two years. Tokyo was the host this year.

The next one will take place in the summer of 2018.

Before that, though, there will be Vancouver Bird Week, 2017 to look forward to.

Next year, I plan to be much more involved. Because I really do believe Vancouver is for the birds. And that's a good thing.

Tuco: it's about an African grey parrot, but also much more

Usually, I write about travel in this space, although that does encompass a broad spectrum of sub-genres.

Today, I'm reviewing a book. Tuco is not a travel book, although the author, Brian Brett, does describe some of his travels in places like British Columbia, Mexico, Thailand, and other destinations in the book.

At some point, paddling is mentioned in the book, although not in a big way.

It's also not a book about the third of the three protagonists in the Sergio Leone 1967 spaghetti western, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," played with panache by Eli Wallach. (Although as the author reveals, there is a connection with the movie.)

The book is about the author's relationship with his African grey parrot. It is an excellent read, and you don't have to have lived with a parrot to appreciate it. While Brett's relationship with his African grey is an important part of the book, it's also a springboard for much deeper conversations about the world we live in and the way we relate to it.

Subtitled, The Parrot, the Others and a Scattershot World, A Life with Birds, Brett delves into his relationship not just with Tuco, but with other birds and the world at large. The book actually is a third version of a three-set volume that is a memoir of his life and its struggles, paralleled by the struggles humankind has in the world, struggles to accept others as they are, struggles to prosper without destroying the world - a "scattershot" world as Brett views it - and how they are both reflected in this out-of-place bird's life.

I say out of place, because Brett views Tuco as an "other" of sorts. He himself was an "other," an outsider growing up, because of being born with Kallman syndrome (a condition that causes a form of androgyny) that created huge issues for him as he entered puberty and grew into young adulthood. "Othering" is what we all do to various degrees to anything we see as strange or different. It's othering that often mutates into bullying, something Brett put up with frequently while growing up in British Columbia.

We "other" birds, animals, people of different religions, races, sexual orientations - the list is almost endless.

An African grey parrot, at Bloedel Conservatory.

The theme of othering crops up many times in the narrative as Brett weaves his way through a tapestry of topics that include science, environmentalism, animal cruelty, bird-watching, travel, small-town politics, his early experiences with pet birds, and life with an African grey parrot.

It's all enjoyable to read, but as someone who has spent close to a quarter-century living with African grey parrots, those anecdotes about Tuco's antics were the most enjoyable, the parts I re-read over and over again, sometimes aloud to anyone who would listen (or anyone who would read the passages I posted on my Facebook page regularly while reading the book.) And there were so many of them that reflect and almost eerily parallel the experiences I've had with my greys. For example:

"When a joke is told in our house, Tuco is always the first to laugh, chiming in milliseconds before anyone else. Does he get the joke? Probably not. What he does is even smarter. ... For Tuco, the crucial factor in a joke is not the joke but the way it makes us behave. He measures the speaker's tone and recognizes it's a joke, not a drama or narration of events. Then, if he is in the room, assessing the speaker's inflections and body language, he can anticipate the timing of the punchline faster than any person can, and that's why he always beats us to the laugh."

That happens all the time in our house with my 15-year-old grey, Coco. 

The book is full of passages like that, stories that will have anyone who lives with parrots smiling, and perhaps even chuckling out loud.

Even those who do not live with parrots will find them humorous - and perhaps a bit hard to believe. But believe me, all the stuff he describes in the book about Tuco's behaviour is real. Most parrot keepers have experienced even more bizarre or outrageous behaviours by their feathered companions.

Tuco is one of the rare books that both entertains and informs. It also stimulates thought and introspection about how we view life, how we might deal with some of the issues described in the book.

The author does reach some conclusions, of sorts, and while I won't tell you what they are, some of what I read still percolates around my coffeepot of a brain, occasionally seeping out through its filters into my conscious. 

If you want to read a book that is just silly parrot stories, you might be disappointed. However, if you want to read a book full of those that also deals with some much more serious life issues - like bullying, environmentalism, or dealing with death - then this is a read for you.
 


African grey parrots in the wild. From the World Parrot Trust.

Memoir much more than just a book about birding and travel

Author Dan Koeppel had me at "A Father, A Son and a Lifelong Obsession." That's the subtitle for his book, To See Every Bird On Earth.

The book was published in 2005, I got it in 2007, but I only just read it this past winter.

I have to fight off the tendency to think, "Wow, why did I wait so long?" But I also believe - on my good days - that everything happens for a reason, everything comes at the right time.

The book is about much more
than counting birds.

I felt a connection with this book, and its author Dan Koeppel, just a few pages into the main part of the book. The prologue intrigued me, simply because it's set in one of my favourite places in the world, the Amazon. I've been fortunate enough to have paddled there and viewed parrots there on a few occasions, so any book that starts off with a segment about seeing birds there stands to keep me interested for at least a few chapters.

The fact that travel would be involved in trying to fulfill the goal described in the title is also a good way to keep me reading.

But what really hooked me - what really made me pour over the pages each night in my library in the middle of winter, where good books to read are a must-have - what really kept me coming back was the human interest story.

In reading the story of his father Richard's life - his birth, youth and adulthood - I was struck by how much it paralleled my own father's life. Not exactly the same, but certainly with enough similarities - and set in approximately the same time period - that it became a bit of an emotional journey for me, as much as it must have been for Koeppel writing it.

I could feel the anguish and frustration his father must have felt, with strict, expectant Jewish parents that thought the only way their son to live a purposeful life was to become a doctor. And get married. And have children. The typical American-dream of the mid-20th century.

His father, though, felt a passion for bird-watching early in his adolescence, and that passion never completely waned. It may have taken a backseat at times, but was always present. Richard Koeppel really would liked to have gone to university to become an ornithologist, but succumbed to parental pressure, studied to become a doctor, got married and had two sons.

But he never became truly happy.

His happiest moments were spent birding; his happiest period in his life was spent travelling around Europe on birding trips while stationed as a military doctor at a U.S. army base in West Germany during the height of the Cold War.

That was also where his his parents' marriage began to disintegrate.

Eventually, they moved back to America, life continued on, but the author's parents eventually split up and went their separate ways, another situation I can certainly relate to.

Koeppel describes some of the trials he went through as a child of split parents, than as an adult in starting his career as a journalist. Again, while not the same experiences I had, eerily similar to what I went through in my life, which resulted in my feeling a great deal of empathy for the author.

The one constant throughout all the unhappiness and struggles was the birding. Richard Koeppel continues to travel around the world recording numbers of birds seen, meeting some of the top-notch experts and authorities in the world of bird-watching and getting ever closer to a huge milestone touched on in the prologue.

Father and son, from the book jacket.

The book does a good job of explaining this world to the reader while also keeping one hooked with the emotion of human interest that always simmers throughout. Koeppel is to be applauded the way he pulls no punches in revealing what went on in his family, all the while doing it in a sensitive, non-sensational manner. But the warts are exposed. As are the good sides, as well.

I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to spoil anything. I won't tell you whether it has a happy ending or a sad ending to the tale...that's all a matter of perspective, anyway.

But it is an excellent read, whether you are a birder, a traveller or just someone interested in reading a memoir full of emotion and honesty, one that can help the reader realize we are all human with human failings.

We can begin to approach a touch of the divine in striving to, and sometimes succeed in, overcoming those failings. And getting right back up to try again, when we do fall down.



This bird - the Marvelous spatuletail - was recorded in the Peruvian amazon; 
Koeppel's book sets sail in the Brazilian Amazon.