Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
The red-wing rhumba
On a recent sojourn to the Bahamas, which we took chiefly for my wife’s health, but which I managed to enjoy nonetheless, I learned several interesting things:
• That the Bahamian economy (which I had read was the third strongest in the western hemisphere, after the U.S. and Canada) is not all it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps things are different in Nassau, but on the isle of Grand Bahama, there’s the impression that at some point in the last few years, things collapsed. There are a lot of unfinished houses, for instance, half-completed structures that have been abandoned. In the case of the island’s famed International Bazaar, the guilty party was apparently a hurricane. It destroyed the hotel next door in 2005, and the Bazaar has never recovered. It’s like a ghost town.
• That Bahamian animals are among the most sociable I’ve ever encountered. A pigeon which we named Esmeralda (although I for one had not a clue about its gender) inevitably strolled into our suite each morning to join us for breakfast. That would have been fine, we were happy to spare a crumb of bread or two, but being a pigeon, she (or he) felt a need to poop every few seconds, so it was always a race to shoo Esmeralda back outside before he (or she) left a deposit. Meanwhile, down on the beach, the water was a bit chilly (Grand Bahama being significantly north of Cuba, for example), so I was even less inclined to swim than usual (I could not be described as a water baby). Nevertheless, on the third day I ventured tentatively seaward, just to say I’d done it, and was only a few feet out when I was suddenly surrounded by a school of large, beautiful “tropical fish”. The lifeguard called them angel fish, and they superficially resemble those popular denizens of home aquariums, but they’re considerably larger, and when they nibble on your fingers and toes, you know you’ve been nibbled. But they act like a welcoming party and will even eat out of your hand. I learned later at a nature centre that they’re called Atlantic spadefish. Google ‘em. They’re quite lovely.
• That I still have my sea legs, despite my advanced age. One day, we went out to the coral reef in a glass-bottomed boat, but the almost-Caribbean sea was a little rough. Several passengers got queasy and worse, but I kept my equilibrium rather well. Rather surprised myself, actually.
And one other thing I learned: my wife and I may well not have been the only Uxbridge residents on Grand Bahama that week. Late in the week, a little bored with reading on the beach (tough life, I know), we rented a car and moseyed east of Freeport to see the island’s Lucayan National Park (named after the Bahamas’ aboriginal people whom Christopher Columbus helped to exterminate). There were caves, and a predictably gorgeous beach, but there were also acres of mangroves, growing in a wide creek/swamp which gets a bit salty at high tide (Grand Bahama is a pretty flat island). So there we were, walking among the mangroves down a wide boardwalk toward the beach, when suddenly I heard a very Uxbridge-ish sound.
If ever you’ve walked along the west shore of Elgin Pond, or past the central marshes of the Countryside Preserve, you will know the sound I’m talking about. Even if you’re not a “birder”, you can hardly miss one of the prettiest and most joyful-sounding of our avian residents: the red-winged blackbird. They tend to hang out wherever the cat-tails are abundant, and there’s one pond on the Preserve that is so alive with red-wing song in the spring that you can hardly hear yourself think.
But as much as they’re an important part of the Uxbridge summer, you’ll be very hard-pressed to find one in February. So where do they go? Apparently, the same place I went. As soon as I heard that distinctive call, I hurried forward to the next interpretive sign along the boardwalk, one that illustrated all the bird species you were likely to find among the mangoves. And sure enough, there he was. My friend the red-wing, come south with his Bahama Mama (or several - red-wings are notoriously polygamous).
For the balance of our nature walk, I was so focussed on watching for my fellow vacationers that I could have easily stepped on several of the giant land crabs whose dens were all along the path. But although I heard the call again a couple of times in the distance, I never did see a red-wing flitting among the mangoves (which, like our Ontario ponds, were also blessed with rich groves of cat-tails).
I’m convinced, however, that the red-wings who frequent Lucayan National Park are the same flock who regale me on Elgin Pond every summer. The second I see one start to rhumba, my suspicions will be confirmed.
