What seems like an absolute lifetime ago, 1998, I went to the US to visit a fish lab in Washington State. I was invited down to teach a couple of people down there a laboratory technique that we had developed in our lab at UBC and, as a side benefit, I made a friend.
I was there for a few days, since the technique wasn’t an instant sample and read sort of tool. On the second day said new friend invited me back to his house for lunch and, while there, his then very young (3 years old?) daughter suddenly got excited at a bird at their feeder.
I looked out and merely saw a pigeon.
I was corrected.
This large psittacine at said seed trough was, in fact, a band-tailed pigeon. A native species, shy, reticent, and actually quite pretty.
Matt’s three year old daughter showed me a photo in a bird book and I said “It’s pretty“. Matt laughed in the kitchen where he was making us some sandwiches and said “Your accent is funny.”
“My accent, have you heard yourself lately?”
We both laughed. Such close proximity geographically and yet…such a different dialect of the same language. Such a different world just next door.
Ove the next couple of days I was introduced to a most excellent brewery where I drank dark heavy beer to everyone else’s light coloured beer, and everyone marvelled that the Canadian wasn’t drunk after three (?) pints. We argued over distance and I pointed out that although they could’t tell me how many kilometres something was away..only miles and miles per hour. every one of them could tell me how many grams to measure a chemical in, how many millimetres or centimetres something was (in the lab), or what the temperature needed was to incubate some lab culture at was.
In the lab, out of the lab…two different languages. I loved it.
Fast forward about 20 years and here we find ourselves in North Vancouver with a feeder off the back deck.
Kirk looks outside and storms towards the french doors to shoo the interlopers away and I yell “Stop!”
He looks at me in surprise and says…”It’s a pigeon!”
“Yes, but not any ordinary pigeon, it’s a native pigeon and I’ve only ever seen them once before, 20 years ago!”
We made a run down to Wild Birds Unlimited and, I refuse to say how many dollars later, we had a backyard bird feeder. A few adjustments and more money later…due to some mathematically proficient squirrels, and we now had a family of band-tailed pigeons that called our yard a way-station.
But man, are they shy….
I feel like this one is 60 feet up that tree looking down at me saying…”We would really like to come and consume as much as pigeonly possible at your feeder…so could you please go back inside because we are very shy and terribly afraid of you….”
It’s a crappy shot…but it’s also about 60 feet up a tree…from about 30 feet away from the tree…so offer me a little bit of slack.
(135/365)
9 comments