Teale Time

We have just returned from Ed Teale's cabin in Connecticut. It was a great thrill for me.

Teale Time Earl Plato
Amazing lady was the late 102 year old Fort Erie resident, Leona LeJeune. Always sharp and interested in what you were doing she affected the lives of many who knew her. I was one. Her son, Jim Lejeune, stopped over and handed a book to me. “Mom, wanted you to have this.” As I took the 360 page book I smiled. A precious book for this nature writer - Journey Into Summer - by Edwin Way Teale. That’s my man - Ed Teale! I have quoted him and used nature themes from his other book- A Walk Through the Year. For over fourteen years of nature writing for the Times and Review I have ‘leaned’ on Ed Teale for inspiration. Now thanks to Leona I have a further source. Already I will be producing an article from a paragraph in my gift book on the whip-poor-will, a bird found in Wainfleet Marsh. Thanks again, Leona.
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I started reading my gift book from Leona LeJeune and there it was!
Ed Teale had visited Niagara Falls, Canada! I quote as follows: “When I talked to A.R. Muma, Chief Game Protector for the Niagara Region, he expressed the opinion that most of the birds found dead below the falls have taken off in the gorge, have become blinded and confused in the driving rain and mist near the cataract and have flown into the plunging water.” A.R. Muma - that’s Roy Muma that many of us older people grew up with. Ed Teale talked with Roy Muma about Navy Island. Again we read: “On Navy Island he showed me a Bald eagle’s nest, now deserted.” Old timers remember that nest at the north end of the island. A few years ago Roy’s son, Gene Muma, took Bud Henningham and I to that old nesting site. No more nest now but a nesting platform near that original location was put up by the Ministry of Natural Resources. Unfortunately no resident eagles yet. On page 29 of Ed Teale’s - Journey Into Summer - we found this 1960 observation. “In recent years the only eagles seen in the vicinity have been transients.” Still true today. “ Great horned owls raised a brood in the abandoned eagle’s nest on Navy Island one year. Later on it was occupied by raccoons.” Noted nature writer, Edwin Way Teale, had been in Niagara! I wish that I could have met him. Thank goodness I have his books. I still ‘lean’ on his words.