Remembering Blah
by Robert M. Reid
I had never been on a Christmas Bird Count—not for lack of interest, but for lack of transportation. But after a few years of birding, I was anxious to give it a try. So I called Tom Hince, the park director of Point Pelee (I live a 40-minute drive from that hallowed mecca) and asked if he knew someone from Windsor who would be “down for the count,” so to speak, with whom I could catch a ride.
His response surprised me. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I could fix you up with blah blah blah.”
“Oh, great,” I said. And then it struck me. “Blah?”
Tom laughed. “His first name is Robert.”
I thought for a moment, “Oh, Bob!”
“And his last name is Loblaw.”
Half an hour later Bob Loblaw called me on the phone and we made arrangements to go on the Christmas Bird Count together.
On the agreed upon day I was standing in the dark at 6:00 a.m. with my binoculars and lunch in my hand when a car I didn’t know stopped. The driver leaned over and unlocked the door, and I got in.
“Good morning!” I said. “I think it’s going to be a good day.”
“Seems like it,” he said, driving off, “but perhaps I’d just better check—you are Joe, aren’t you?”
“Joe!” I panicked. “No, I’m not Joe!”
“Well, no matter,” he replied as we took the ramp onto the highway. “I’ll find out who you are later.”
I was sure I had been kidnapped by a madman. “Where are we going?” I demanded.
“On a quest for avifauna,” he said, looking straight ahead. In his mouth it sounded like Camelot. Whoever this psycho was, he apparently was going on the Christmas Bird Count.
At the visitor center in Point Pelee, quite a few people seemed to know him, especially the naturalists. “Good morning, Blah” “Hi, Blah.” I swear they all called him Blah. It seems that if your name is Bob Loblaw, people can’t help it. We received a map of our birding area, and the rules of the game, and set out. I wouldn’t say Blah was a good birder—actually he seemed to be pretty bad because he couldn’t identify anything. “Look there, look there,” he would say, or, “I’ve got something here.” To help him out I started saying the names of his finds. “It’s a purple finch,” I’d tell him, but he’d only mumble, “Right,” as though he already knew it.
As the day wore on, I realized that he could identify the birds, but only after some consideration. He simply had a really poor memory for names. For instance, we had permission to stop at the house of local nature photographer Jim Flynn. Jim had a feeder set up and had a small woodlot on his property. While Blah looked at the feeder, I started for the woodlot. And then I heard him. “Psssst.” (A pause.) “Hey.” (A long pause.) “Come here, come here.” Evidently, he was struggling to remember my name, which, by the way, is the same as his.
“What have you got?” I called back, a little irritated. “It’s a—” I waited while he struggled. I detected traces of smoke in the air. “A Carolina chickadee!” he finally declared, triumphantly.
Now, southern Ontario does not get Carolina chickadees at all. And if one showed up in the winter, when it was not singing, you could not reliably identify it. “How can you tell?” I asked. But by then I had walked over to him, raised my binoculars, and found a Carolina.
“It’s a Carolina wren,” I said.
“Right,” he agreed, but then added a little apologetically, “Thank you.”
We birded together every couple weeks after that. I came to know that Blah was a decent birder, really, he just had this memory problem. That’s not too bad when you think about it—I mean, he had great recall for verbs, adverbs, even adjectives—only nouns gave him trouble. So, what percentage of one’s vocabulary is that, after all?
In late February we ran into Betty Learmouth, a local nature enthusiast who had known Blah for several years. She was scouting for people to lead birding tours for the Essex County Field Naturalists Club, and enlisted Blah for the job. She emphasized that this was definitely a beginners’ group—people who were on possibly their first birding trip, and Blah could choose any spot he liked to take them. He agreed to lead a trip to Ojibway Park, a local spot that included woods, prairie, and some small ponds as well. It’s an excellent place to observe spring migration, and is definitely underbirded, possibly because everyone runs to Point Pelee.
So, on a beautiful day in the middle of the fifth month, Blah and I gathered with about 10 other individuals to tour the Ojibway Nature Preserve. These people were definitely beginners—only half had brought binoculars. As we walked to the wood’s edge, various birds presented themselves. Blah would pause thoughtfully as people enjoyed the different species, and after some consideration would announce eastern towhee or magnolia warbler or whatever. It was slow going, but no one seemed to mind. Then in a flash a different bird shot by, very close to us. Its bright golden feathers shone in the sun, impressing everyone. “What is that?” several people called as the bird landed in a low shrub just ahead of us.
“That’s a good bird!” Blah enthused.
“What is it?” the people asked.
“That’s a rare bird!” he reassured them.
“What is it?” they asked again.
Not wanting to shout from the back, I started making my way to the front to help Blah out, but at that moment the bird flew off, way off, where we would never find it again.
“What was it?” people were still asking.
“It was a yellow…bellied…no, breasted…yellow-breasted…chat—yellow-breasted chat! It was a yellow-breasted chat, everybody.” Blah was clearly exhausted from the strain. I suppose it’s just as well Blah never led another tour, but to make things easier, he wasn’t asked.
One day, after we had birded together for a few years, I was at Blah’s house. He stepped out of the room, leaving me with his wife, Monica, and his teenage daughter, Elizabeth. I mentioned to Monica that her husband had the worst memory for names I had ever encountered. “I know,” she said. “A few days ago he answered the phone and somebody asked for Cathy. He said, ‘Yeah, she’s here,’ and put me on.”
“Phew!” I whistled. “That’s pretty bad.”
“True, but I get called dear and honey all the time.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“And we always understand his meaning. For instance, if he says he stopped at the bank and bought milk, we know he actually stopped at the store.”
“Right,” Elizabeth added. “We just don’t know whether he actually bought milk.”
Occasionally Blah would mention his infirmity in the usual terms, but one day he referred to his having the memory of a housefly. Now, I’ve heard of strong as an ox, and stubborn as a mule, but forgetful as a housefly?
“Yeah,” Blah assured me, “I heard this show on the radio, and they said that some really bored scientists with nothing else to do took some houseflies’ brains out of their tiny little skulls and looked at them under microscopes. And you know what they found? The part of the brain that contains memory—it’s way ’round back—isn’t there. They have no cells for memory. None at all! So they figure that’s why you see flies bouncing off your windows again and again in the summer. The fly is in your house and it sees the outside, and it says, ‘Hey, there’s outside!’ and it flies into the window, and it bounces back and says, ‘Hey, there’s outside!’ and it flies into the window and bounces back and says, ‘Hey, my face hurts, and there’s outside!’ You see what I mean? It really makes you pause and think.”
“Blah,” I sighed, “remembering your address makes you pause and think.”
“It’s true,” he agreed, “I do spend more time thinking than most people.”
So, there we were, on a beautiful day in early November. It was one of those late autumn days when the sun is shining bright and clear, when a jacket is all you need to keep warm, and winter seems a long way off. We decided to drive along the lakeshore and look for migrating waterfowl. Even the ducks seemed peaceful on the water. Coming upon a small bridge we had a clear view of an expanse of the lake, and we could see huge rafts of ducks bobbing on the water. Blah stopped the car and we raised our binoculars.
“Man! That’s a lot of mergansers!” I exclaimed.
“Hundreds,” Blah agreed. “And every one’s white-breasted.”
As he drove on again, I corrected him, “You mean they’re common.”
“They sure are!” he said, without a trace of a smile.
With the warmth and the peace of the day I smiled deeply and nestled back into the car seat. “Blah,” I mused, “you are definitely one of those people I will never forget as long as I live.”
“Aww, that’s nice…and I’ll never forget you either, Bill.”
I think he was kidding!
Robert M. Reid lives and birds in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
