Tag Archives: Birds

Featured Creature

Our featured creature for the month of March is the BARRED OWL.

The Barred Owl is a medium-to-large owl native to North America. It is named for the horizontal “barred” pattern on its chest and vertical streaks on its belly. This owl has a rounded head, dark brown eyes (unlike many other owls that have yellow eyes), and no ear tufts. Its plumage is a mix of brown, white and grey, providing excellent camouflage in forested environments.

They inhabit mature, mixed forests with plenty of cover, particularly those near water sources like swamps, marshes, rivers and lakes, and are commonly found in the eastern United States, parts of Canada, and the Pacific Northwest.

The Barred Owl’s hooting call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” is a classic sound of old forests and treed swamps. They are a lot easier to hear than to see.

Unlike some owls that are strictly nocturnal, Barred Owls can be active during the day, though they are most vocal and active at dawn and dusk. They are generally solitary outside of the breeding season but form strong pair bonds. They are territorial and will defend their nesting areas from other owls or predators. They are sit-and-wait predators, meaning they perch silently and scan for movement before swooping down to capture prey. Their diet is highly varied, including small mammals (mice, voles, rabbits), birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects and even fish. They are strong fliers but generally prefer short bursts of flight through dense forest rather than long-distance soaring.

Our featured creature for the month of January is the beautiful VARIED THRUSH.

The Varied Thrush is a medium-sized bird native to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, known for its striking plumage, which features a combination of slate-blue, orange, and black colors that create a visually stunning appearance. Male Varied Thrushes are dark blue-gray on the back, rich burnt-orange below with a sooty-black breastband and orange line over the eye. The wings are blackish with two orange bars and orange edging to the flight feathers. Females have the same patterns, but are paler gray-brown than males. Typically found in coniferous and mixed forests, the Varied Thrush prefers dense underbrush where it can forage for insects, fruits, and seeds. It is also known for its melodious song, which can often be heard during the breeding season, adding to its allure as one of North America’s more enchanting bird species.

Observational Experiment

So, I was listening to CBC Radio yesterday and they interviewed the renowned wildlife artist, Robert Bateman on his 94th birthday. He was talking about paying attention to what was happening in your environment. Look at the birds, observe the seasons and it will enrich your life. I have found this to be the case in my life. So, I set up an observational experiment using the Merlin app on my iPhone. It can identify birds by their songs, so it’s really useful at this time of year when we have many migratory birds coming through. There’s one observational nugget. At this time of year, you will encounter many birds that don’t live here year round. They come to your region on the way to somewhere else or they come here to nest, raise their young and then leave again in the fall. The natural world is not bound by borders and politics, but by seasons and habitat.

Anyway, the experiment was this. Go into the woods, on the off leash dog trail, east of Willingdon, near the Parkland tank farm. There’s a bench a couple of hundred yards in, where I sat to listen and observe. I turned on my Merlin app which started recording the bird songs in the near vicinity. It’s pretty dense forest, so seeing the birds is difficult, but hearing them is not. Over the course of a few minutes, Merlin picked up and identified 16 species within 50 yards of where I sat. Some of the migratory birds included the Black-headed Grosbeak, the American Goldfinch, Warbling Vireo, and Black-throated Gray Warbler.

The second part of the experiment was to go to McGill Park, a block away and sit at a bench there, surrounded by acres of grass and start recording. There, Merlin picked up 5 species, one of which was the violet green Swallow, a few of which I could see in the open sky above the tank farm. When I moved to Vancouver, Swallows were common sights in the summer, primarily the violet green and barn Swallows. Fifty years later, they are very scarce. The data backs up this observation with swallow populations plummeting by 50-90% according to the species.

So the two habitats I sampled are in the accompanying photos. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why the difference in biodiversity. In a more abundant environment, we get greater biodiversity. In a monoculture, very little. We have over-lawned our parks and need to rewild some of the acres of grass monoculture that we have inherited from a Victorian notion of what a park should be. We need to change that way of thinking. That’s why Wildscaping Our Neighbourhood Society was formed.

Prentice Lee

Habitat 1 – greater biodiversity
Habitat 2 – grass monoculture