The Last Flight

One of my first memories is my father taking me out into his duck blind on a crisp autumn afternoon. I must have been five or six. "Keep still. Here they come," he whispered. Soon black ducks were overhead and his double-barreled twelve gauge boomed away, magically bringing down chocolate brown birds with glistening white underwings.
"I can't see the ducks," I complained, jumping up and down, trying to see incoming birds. He chuckled, picked me up and sat me in his lap so I could see above the cattails. Now my view wasn't blocked, but "Where should I look?" I asked, trying to scan the sky for ducks by moving my head from side to side.

"Everywhere," he said simply. Then he smiled and he explained one of my first and most important wildlife watching lessons. "You have to learn to just look at whole sky, not at anything in particular. Just let your eyes go and don't try to look too hard. When you see something dark that stands out, you focus in on it like with binoculars. If it's wings flap slow, it's a sea gull or a heron. If they move fast and steady, then it's a duck or a goose." Soon I was his "duck spotter." The hard part then became getting down off his lap so he could shoot.

I grew up on an island, Grosse Ile, which is a ten-mile-long cigar-shaped isle situated where the Detroit River empties into Lake Erie. We were surrounded by water, marsh and oak-hickory woodlots remaining on the family's old farm lands. At first my father taught me simple woods skills, like walking quietly in dry leaves. "If you want to see game, you have to put your foot down softly so it doesn't make any noise." When I could do this he said "Now you have eyes in your feet." We would have contests to see who could walk more quietly, and then who would see more animals.

As I became aware of animals and plants, he taught me lessons about nature's cycles and moods. "Watch for the teal when the first breath of fall comes," was one of the standards my father's calendar. "The first breath of fall" was a time in late August or early September when a cool wind from the north would sweep down, foreshadowing the arrival of autumn. Sure enough, every year, like clockwork, the first fall migratory flight of blue-wing teal would arrive, as the water skiers were getting in their last swings around the Detroit River. When the teal arrived, it was time to get out the decoys, check the lines, and dab on a little paint.

Immersed in some of North America's best waterfowl habitat, the annual migrations were as predictable as the changing seasons and the cycles of the moon. After the teal came the early black ducks and mallards, pouring into the marshes along Lake Erie as the leaves began to turn color. We could hear them at night, splashing and feeding in the marsh beyond the house. Another of the vivid memories that anchors the foundation of my love for nature is a time when my father and I paddled right out into the middle of a flock of those early dabblers. It was an hour before shooting started, and no moon was in the sky. We hoped we could sneak pass the flock and get set up, but we ended up right in the middle of at least two hundred blacks and mallards. When they finally decided what we were, they erupted all around us into a cloud of quaking silvery wings, that drenched us.

Next came widgeon, gadwall, and pintails. Opening day of duck season was always around the first of October and the bag was almost entirely puddle ducks; an appetizer for the birds that were about to come. The divers were what everyone looked forward to.

"You can set your watch by the bluebills. They'll be down every year on October 20," was another of dad's standards of waterfowl wisdom. Sure enough, almost to the hour, large rafts of scaup, sprinkled with redheads, would mysteriously appear on the magical date. For the next several weeks, hunting was spectacular. You didn't need any foul weather to bring the birds in close to shore. Those ducks were fresh from Canadian breeding grounds. Many acted like they had never saw a human before. On a number of occasions I recall them landing in the decoys as you were putting the blocks out.
The highlight of the season was the arrival of the canvasbacks.

As snow flakes began to fall, clouds of the big chestnut-headed divers would come streaming down out of the northern skies, settling into beds of eel grass and other tasty aquatic vegetation. Every Downriver duck hunter slept little when that flight arrived. A limit of "bull" or drake canvasbacks was something to brag about.

As the season was coming to a close, large black and white goldeneyes (we called them "whistlers" because their wings make such a loud whistling sound) would appear in the open water. On a still day, when the ice rimmed the shores, two haunting sounds broke the silence: the whispering whistle of passing flights of goldeneyes and the ice cracking in the current, which sounded like tiny bells.

Just as the season was coming to a close came a flight of darker black ducks with bright reddish-orange legs. "Red-legs" we all called them. They would be right ahead of the first winter storms that would cover the marshes with ice. There was an atmosphere of wildness about them that was haunting. They seemed to carry the spirit of their Hudson Bay breeding grounds along with them.

The Michigan waterfowl hunting season would usually come to a close in early December, but if Lake Erie and the Detroit River didn't freeze over, many ducks would stay in the area. It is the availability of food, not weather, that drives the migration urge of most waterfowl. As Christmas approached, many people would sit in their cars watching mallards and black ducks feed along the ice shelf by shore, while out in the deeper water large flocks of divers -- especially canvasback and goldeneye -- popped up and down. The Detroit River is nearly a mile wide at its mouth, and on a warm winter day one can sometimes see thousands of ducks from bank to bank.

The most spectacular fall migration of all came last. As the river and lake began to freeze over, a flock of giant whistling swans would elegantly make their appearance, chased south by snow storms that made the birds become invisible as they flew. The grand finale to the annual parade of waterfowl, the arrival of the majestic, noisy, swans always made the front page of the newspapers. So long as pockets of open water remained in the river, you could see them, like icebergs, floating in the open water on a cold December day. Then, like ghosts, they disappeared as the temperature dropped, the river and lake froze over, and Canada and the United States became linked under one blanket of snow and ice.

There was a darker side to the annual waterfowl migration in the lower Detroit River in the 1950's and 60's. Pollution. We all knew about it from the taste of the fish. Almost as soon and the perch and walleyes came into the river in the spring, they tasted like oil in the waters along the American side, their flesh tainted with phenol and a myriad of other wastes dumped upstream. Anyone with a boat on the Detroit River who liked to eat fish bought a Canadian fishing license. There was a lot less polluting industry over there.

A 1964 International Joint Commission research report on water pollution in the Detroit River confirmed what we all sensed: the lower twenty-six miles of the Detroit River "were polluted bacteriologically, chemically, physically, and biologically so as to interfere with municipal water supplies, recreation, fish and wildlife propagation, and navigation, " by millions of gallons of waste waters dumped into the river daily.

Oil spills were the most obvious problem. They almost always happened at night, when no one could trace their origins. "Always give something back to nature, because she gives you so many gifts," was one of my father's favorite nature ethics. Right after the hunting season ended, if the river was still open and a spill washed down, we would go out in the boat and catch oil-soaked birds, bring them in and wash them down with detergents. Then we put them in sheltered pens and fed them until they got their strength back and their natural oil came back to weatherize their feathers. When they were well we'd have a party and let them go.

We felt good about the few birds we saved, but Professor George Hunt at the University of Michigan was the person who gave us the sobering truth about the hidden toll of oil on waterfowl. When a duck, goose or swan swims into an oil slick, their feathers quickly become matted. They now weigh more, sit lower in the water, and have lost the protective layer of fluffy down that insulates them from the cold water. Staying alive takes progressively more energy. The cold water and air soon saps their strength. Sensing they have a problem, the birds nervously preen their feathers, trying to clean off the sticky goo. Unfortunately, they ingest some of the oil in the process, which makes them sick. We were picking off the few healthy ones that could still float, Hunt noted soberly in a meeting with local duck hunters. Thousands more, simply slipped beneath the water and drowned, his research concluded. He estimated an average of 10,000 ducks, geese and swans died from pollution every winter in the Lower Detroit River area in the 1950's and early 1960's. These kills were greater than the kill of waterbirds destroyed by the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 that got so much press coverage.

Some years, the oil wasn't as bad, but I well remember a spill my senior year in high school, which was 1960. It was late-December. The weather had been fairly cold, but the river had stayed open along the American shoreline because of the large amounts of cooling water discharged upstream from the automobile, steel and electric power plants.
Thousands of ducks were flocked up in the warmer water, directly downstream from the outflows of the plants.
Then the worst happened. A pipe broke at a refinery along the River Rouge, an upstream major tributary of the Detroit River. Thousands of gallons of oil escaped into a marsh. They tried containment booms. They held for awhile, but a storm swept through and broke the barriers open. Down the narrow channel came thousands of gallons of oil, like a black nightmare. Fire departments issued warnings that dropping a match into the river could start a raging inferno.
Fighting oil spills was still a crude art in those days. Despite heroic efforts, they could not contain the flow. When the Rouge River emptied into the relentless surge of current that pushes a 175,000 cubic feet of water per second through the Detroit River under the Ambassador Bridge, a wildlife disaster was in the making. Worse yet, the temperature had started to drop. As the river froze over, the ducks poured into the remaining open stretches of water, which were directly in the path of the oil.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources put out an emergency call to all the duck hunters and conservation groups in the Downriver area. Within hours emergency teams were formed. The strategy was straightforward. We had to keep the ducks out of those pockets of open water and try to get them to leave the far western shore and feed in the open water along the eastern shore of Grosse Ile, or leave for the season.

Along West River Road, aluminum boats were dragged out across the ice and launched into those open pockets of water. This is a dangerous, but familiar skill to Lake Erie hunters and perch fishermen. You walk along side your boat, sliding it across the ice, like a sled. As the ice starts to crack, you quickly climb in the boat. Hopefully you are close enough to the open water so you can break any remaining ice with an oar. Watches were set up. Every so often boaters would motor around the pockets, chasing birds out. Sometimes they would shoot into the air to scare the ducks away before they landed. A few people got a little wet, but no one was hurt, and gallons of coffee kept the volunteers warm.

Another group of volunteers headed for the east shore of Grosse Ile, where there were open pockets of water and no oil. Duck boats and other light row boats were to filled with grain, slid out across the ice, and launched. The plan was to dump the corn on the ice and into the shallow water to draw the birds away from the western shoreline. Soon tons of golden yellow corn became a smorgasbord for any waterfowl that could find it.

Just as the boats were hitting the water, the news came. It was a wave that swept through us all, moving us to even greater commitment to what we were doing. The swans had been spotted up in Lake St. Claire, which was quickly freezing over. The thought of those spotless white whistling swans, an endangered species, landing in that black oil seemed to ignite a fire in everyone. It was a crime against the very soul of nature.

At the north end of the island, a group of duck hunters launched their boats into the icy water to create a barrier to drive the swans away from the western shoreline. On the still winter day, you could hear the flock coming a mile away, several hundred white giants hooting and whistling like a pack of banshees. As they came within a few hundred yards, hunters emptied their guns into the air. The birds were startled. As they swerved east a loud cheer went up. Minutes later they landed along East River Road and quickly found the grain.

For the next few days, truckloads of grain were dumped all along East River Road. The weather held and for one week, and people in droves came to lend a hand. We lost a few ducks, but to my knowledge not a single swan had a spot of oil on their snowy white breast. Then a cold blast of wind came down from the north. The river froze over, and the birds left.
Shortly thereafter, the annual end of the season party was held at my father's duck club, the Round Island Hunt Club. The tradition was that all the members would dress in black tie, tails and their wives wore evening gowns -- everyone, of course, wore rubber boots as they had to walk across the ice to get to the club house. Toasts were raised on high to the ducks and swans saved as the old player piano belted out tune after tune. Most of the members had put in a lot of hours keeping the birds and the oil apart, and they had good reason to celebrate.

The day after the party, as I was helping clean up, my father told me that he felt especially good about helping save the swans. With a last name of "Swan," that would make sense, but there was another reason, he explained. It seems as though during the Depression, one of the hired hands on the family farm had killed a swan for food. The family had decided not to report it, as times were tough, but my father had always felt guilty about that swan. Finally he had gotten a chance to balance things out. Another of his standards was that you should give back to nature for what you take.

My dad was like a tree grown out of the soil on Grosse Ile. He was spent nearly his whole life there. There was a mineral well on the family land, drilled in 1903 when he was only two. Geologists said it was the largest flowing well east of the Mississippi. He ran a tourist business selling the water and other things for most of his life. In the nineteen-eighties, when the business was good one year, he dug a pond so the water from the well would make a half-acre wetland, "Just like it used to be in the old days," he said with pride. Ducks flocked into the pond to feast on a snail that thrived on the mineral-rich water. We heard many stories about the "good old days" while watching those ducks in the new pond. One of his favorites was about the time a group of wealthy friends of his father from Detroit had come to hunt ducks on that pond. When they arrived the evening before, they brought along special expensive hand-made grass suits, the forerunners of modern camouflage. My dad remembered the incident as he had forgotten to lock up the horse that evening. Apparently that grass sure was tasty for the horse.

When a person and a wild place are connected strongly, something special happens, especially if you care for the place. In native cultures, they speak of people who become one with the spirit of a place and become its guardian. At its peak, the family well flowed almost two million gallons of water a day. As time passed, the well and my father seemed to have an inseparable bond. The flow of the well waned as he grew older. He lived to be one month shy of 93, and worked right up until the day he died. Three days before he died, the well stopped flowing. It started up for a few days, about two months later, when I sold his car. Then it stopped, and hasn't flowed since. The wetland around the well still fills up with water every spring, so it remains as his monument.

We buried my dad out along the Huron River, which now flows into a much, much cleaner Detroit River and Lake Erie. Salmon spawn in a stream that just a few decades ago held only carp and few catfish. It was a snowy December day when I last visited his grave, around the time of the last flight. Most of the Huron River was frozen over. But there was a pocket of open water in the river. In it swam a single swan.