Citizen’s beloved ‘Bird Lady’ inspired a generation of experts and novices
When Elizabeth Le Geyt wrote her final column after 39 years in the Ottawa Citizen, she added a simple message of appreciation in the middle.
“Now it is my turn to say ‘thank you’ to all the birders who have supported me over the past 39 years and made the column possible,” Le Geyt wrote in her March 23, 2013 Birds column. “I shall miss opening all the reports and seeing the beautiful pictures that were made possible by the digital cameras and the great photographers, but I have many happy memories. So, it is goodbye, long life and many more wonderful pictures to you all.”
Then it was back to birds — three reports of new spring robins, an observation on the intelligence of starlings, and a photo quiz of bird identification.
Le Geyt, whose weekly column was beloved by expert birders and novices alike, died Wednesday in Greely. She was 103.
“That column was monumental for the Ottawa area,” said Bruce Di Labio, who began following the Citizen Bird column in 1967 when it was written by Le Geyt’s predecessor, Wilf Bell, and eventually took over the column himself after Le Geyt retired. “It had a huge following. Not just birders, but among the general public.
“Mrs. Le Geyt (Di Labio always called her Mrs.) wasn’t a hardcore birder by any stretch, but she wrote a really nice column about every aspect of birds. People loved it.”
“Birds are so, so beautiful,” Le Geyt (pronounced Le Jet) once said. “I don’t know how anyone could not love them.”
Elizabeth Rothera was born in London, England, on June 28, 1914, the same day as the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event that triggered the First World War. She was educated in the English public schools and was schooled in the ways of the natural world. “In school, they used to go into the natural world with notebooks to make observations,” her son, Michael, said from Vancouver. “She loved everything to do with nature and the natural world.”
She and her husband, Jack Le Geyt, came to Canada in 1952. The marriage would end in divorce, but not before the couple had five sons: John, Christopher, Ashley, Michael and Philip.
Incredibly, Le Geyt’s life spanned four monarchs, 16 prime ministers and 18 U.S. presidents. To mark her 100th birthday in 2014, she published a memoir, Bird Lady: A lifelong love affair with birds.
Le Geyt wrote her first Citizen column in March 1974, when she was 58. It would appear every Saturday for the next 39 years. She never missed a deadline and rarely got a bird wrong.
Le Geyt’s love of birds was complete and uncomplicated. She would be happier watching the antics of chickadees in her Ottawa garden than trekking through the Amazon rainforest trying to add a rare species to her life list.
“It’s so sad that, more and more, they’re not really interested in the bird, in its beauty, they just want to tick it off their list and go on to the next one,” she once said.
“She appealed to the common nature lover,” said Wilson Hum, whose photos often graced Le Geyt’s column. “That appealed to people. She would talk about helping injured birds, whereas with ‘birders’ it’s more about counting and identifying.” A typical column would mark some noteworthy sighting — a phoebe or a crossbill, for example — perhaps a personal shoutout — “Mr. ____ has been one of the most loyal supporters of this column since 1975 when he reported a hawk owl ...” — and some sage advice on bird seed or a tidbit about the cowbird’s parasitic nesting habits. Her fans loved it.
Le Geyt wanted to retire after writing the column for 40 years. It was only a the last minute that she realized a miscalculation meant she was leaving after 39, said Doug Fischer, her last editor at the paper. Le Geyt was disappointed but decided to give up the column anyway. She was 98.
In her later years, Le Geyt lived at a retirement home in Greely where she would surreptitiously remove her window screens so she could more easily fill her bird feeders. She confided to Fischer that she once left the window open when she left and came back to find two squirrels in her room.
“She quickly closed her door and spent ages trying to shoo them out from corners and under tables and her bed where they were hiding in fear,” Fischer said in an email. “She laughed so hard telling me this story she was in tears. She had to get them out herself lest she be discovered without a screen. And she swore me to silence.”
Le Geyt was a staunch supporter of Ottawa’s Wild Bird Care Centre, which in turn named an environmental award after her. In 2011, Le Geyt was awarded the Order of Ontario. She had long been troubled by arthritis and gout, and recently her eyesight began to fail, leaving her unable to see her beloved birds.
“My mother used to talk about growing old gracefully,” she told the Citizen on the occasion of her 100th birthday. “Well, I don’t care much about being graceful, but I am grateful that I do have my mind.”
Le Geyt leaves her five sons, eight grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. Her funeral will be held Saturday, Oct. 14 at Tubman Funeral Home in Kars, with visitation from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and the service at 1:30, with reception to follow. bcrawford@postmedia.com twitter.com/getBAC