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This week’s cold and snow will likely kill off many of the birds that stayed around for Ottawa’s warm autumn, a leading birder says.
“There are a lot of late lingering birds still around,” said birder Bruce Di Labio. On Monday he photographed a black-throated grey warbler — a little songbird that somehow took a wrong turn from its home in the southwestern United States. It should have flown south, and now it’s too late.
“I was able to get about four feet from it,” Di Labio said. “It just sat there a foot above the ground, tight against this little tree. You could see it shivering and then it just closed its eyes in the sunlight, obviously trying to heat up.
“Thirty or 40 seconds later it was hopping around again, feeding and chipping.”
There’s a group of great blue herons west toward Renfrew and Cobden that should have flown south by now as well, he said.
“Some are likely still in relatively good condition, but some of them aren’t, or would be lingering late because … they’re not in good shape and their life is being prolonged by unusually mild conditions.”
“There’s a grey catbird that’s lingering, (and) a hermit thrush.” Both are small songbirds.
“There is a mortality of birds pre-winter” when the temperature drops, he said.
“Their life is extended with a mild (fall) conditions, and we haven’t had any major overnight cold” until this week. “We haven’t had major snow either. So they have been able to access food and not use a lot of energy overnight keeping warm,” but now they’re in trouble.
“People don’t realize what happens to these late lingering birds that birders and photographers are all excited about. The prognosis is a number of them will perish.”
Di Labio has more bird news: This is the fifth straight winter than our region has had an influx of snowy owls. They normally come south every few years, when there’s a food shortage farther north.
“This is unprecedented,” he said. “Two years in a row is always exciting, but five years in a row” hasn’t been seen before.
There are 20 to 30 birds in this region “but this movement (to the south) is all around the Great Lakes region,” he said.
Some of the snowies have a hard time adjusting to humans. Anouk Hoedeman runs a group called Safe Wings, which promotes ways to keep birds safe — for instance, avoiding collisions with buildings.
She knows of five snowy owls that have been hit by cars around Ottawa, and one that hit a window. Several of them died.
Hoedeman asks that people watch for snowy owls and hawks on roads, where they sometimes land to eat. The big birds can’t take off as fast as a sparrow because “they need to take a little run at it, so it takes them longer to get out of the way than people think it will. And that’s how a lot of them get killed.”
She also believes that baiting owls with mice to get a dramatic photograph teaches the owls to be unafraid of cars and humans. Tossing food out the car window will attract mice, drawing the owls close to roads, she added.
She recommends taking injured owls or hawks to the Wild Bird Care Centre, or to contact her at (613) 216-8999. Both she and the Wild Bird centre have permits to take in wild birds.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
“There are a lot of late lingering birds still around,” said birder Bruce Di Labio. On Monday he photographed a black-throated grey warbler — a little songbird that somehow took a wrong turn from its home in the southwestern United States. It should have flown south, and now it’s too late.
“I was able to get about four feet from it,” Di Labio said. “It just sat there a foot above the ground, tight against this little tree. You could see it shivering and then it just closed its eyes in the sunlight, obviously trying to heat up.
“Thirty or 40 seconds later it was hopping around again, feeding and chipping.”
There’s a group of great blue herons west toward Renfrew and Cobden that should have flown south by now as well, he said.
“Some are likely still in relatively good condition, but some of them aren’t, or would be lingering late because … they’re not in good shape and their life is being prolonged by unusually mild conditions.”
“There’s a grey catbird that’s lingering, (and) a hermit thrush.” Both are small songbirds.
“There is a mortality of birds pre-winter” when the temperature drops, he said.
“Their life is extended with a mild (fall) conditions, and we haven’t had any major overnight cold” until this week. “We haven’t had major snow either. So they have been able to access food and not use a lot of energy overnight keeping warm,” but now they’re in trouble.
“People don’t realize what happens to these late lingering birds that birders and photographers are all excited about. The prognosis is a number of them will perish.”
Di Labio has more bird news: This is the fifth straight winter than our region has had an influx of snowy owls. They normally come south every few years, when there’s a food shortage farther north.
“This is unprecedented,” he said. “Two years in a row is always exciting, but five years in a row” hasn’t been seen before.
There are 20 to 30 birds in this region “but this movement (to the south) is all around the Great Lakes region,” he said.
Some of the snowies have a hard time adjusting to humans. Anouk Hoedeman runs a group called Safe Wings, which promotes ways to keep birds safe — for instance, avoiding collisions with buildings.
She knows of five snowy owls that have been hit by cars around Ottawa, and one that hit a window. Several of them died.
Hoedeman asks that people watch for snowy owls and hawks on roads, where they sometimes land to eat. The big birds can’t take off as fast as a sparrow because “they need to take a little run at it, so it takes them longer to get out of the way than people think it will. And that’s how a lot of them get killed.”
She also believes that baiting owls with mice to get a dramatic photograph teaches the owls to be unafraid of cars and humans. Tossing food out the car window will attract mice, drawing the owls close to roads, she added.
She recommends taking injured owls or hawks to the Wild Bird Care Centre, or to contact her at (613) 216-8999. Both she and the Wild Bird centre have permits to take in wild birds.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
