All participants on any bird walk must have purchased a ticket through Eventbrite.ca and present the ticket to Jim prior to the bird walk. The weather plays a big part in bird walks and Jim reminds participants to dress anticipating weather changes and to carry water to keep hydrated.

Saturday July 9, 2022 Burnsmead in Fish Creek Park

(9:00am meet in parking lot at Burnsmead ). 

Ticket price:  $6.00 +GST +fees

Ticket must be purchased through Eventbrite.ca—2022 WBS bird walks

Saturday July 23, 2022 Ralph Klein Park

(Meet at park off 84 Street S.E. about 2km south of Shepard.  Access off 114 Avenue at Stoney Trail)

Ticket price:  $6.00 +GST +fees

Ticket must be purchased through Eventbrite.ca—2022 WBS bird walks

Question: 

I am getting conflicting advice on whether to take down my feeders due to avian flu.  The SPCA is recommending that we take them down, whereas Birds Canada and Cornell Laboratory are both telling us that it is okay to leave them up.  Whom should I listen to?

Answer:

Probably one of the most vexing challenges faced by those of us is whether to take one’s feeders down when faced with the possible presence of a bird-killing disease.  The latest one has to do with avian flu, one of the more dangerous diseases threatening our birds.  This nasty pathogen has now shown up in North America and confirmed cases of wild birds being infected by it are certainly out there.  But does that mean that we must take down our feeders as recommended by some organizations concerned with animal welfare?

First of all, avian flu usually affects poultry flocks.  Because these domestic flocks do occasionally come into contact with waterfowl like ducks and geese, which in turn are preyed upon by raptorial birds like Bald eagles and Peregrine falcons, avian flu can certainly enter wild bird populations.  But the odds of the disease affecting the songbirds visiting our feeders is exceedingly unlikely.  And that is exactly why the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the American Bird Conservancy and Birds Canada are NOT recommending that we take down our feeders.  This is completely contrary to what your local SPCA is telling us to do.  But I would rather listen to advice given by organizations who actually have bird experts on their staff rather than organizations which deal mainly with dogs and cats.  Moreover, I would also ask why the SPCA is not also recommending to the public to keep our cats indoors to help stop 2 billion birds from being killed every year in the US alone and that we take steps to minimize bird collisions with windows.  Why is avian flu so much more important than that?

David M. Bird, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Wildlife Biology, McGill University www.askprofessorbird.com

David M. Bird is Emeritus Professor of Wildlife Biology and the former Director of the Avian Science and Conservation Centre at McGill University. As a past-president of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists, a former board member with Birds Canada, a Fellow of both the American Ornithological Society and the International Ornithological Union, he has received several awards for his conservation and public education efforts. Dr. Bird is a regular columnist on birds for Bird Watcher’s Digest and Canadian Wildlife magazines and is the author of several books and over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He is the consultant editor for multiple editions of DK Canada’s Birds of Canada, Birds of Eastern Canada, Birds of Western Canada, and Pocket Birds of Canada.  To know more about him, visit www.askprofessorbird.com or email david.bird@mcgill.ca.   

DONATIONS

Located at The Wild Bird Store (near the seed bins). We collect your cash  as well as “wishlist” donations and arrange to deliver them to local wildlife organizations including Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation, Alberta Institute of Conservation and Ellis Bird Farm.

We ask for your support quarterly for each of these organizations. 

For June, July and August 2022 your donations will go to:

Ellis Bird Farm

www.ellisbirdfarm.ca

The History of ELLIS BIRD FARM

(Opens for the season May 23, 2022)

The Ellis family of Pakenham, Ontario, came west in 1886 to settle on a ranch near Calgary.  Their son John, then a teenager, was married in 1894 to Agnes Clark who had come west from Ontario in 1888 to teach school.  They lived near Calgary until 1906 when they moved with their family of four children to a quarter section homestead in the Joffre district.  In 1907 they built a two-storey frame house and subsequently enlarged the farm by the purchase of an additional five quarters.

After John and Agnes passed away in the early 1950s, two of their children, Charlie and Winnie, took over the farm operations.  At about the same time, Charlie began a project that was to dominate the rest of his life; he set out his first nesting box for the Mountain bluebirds.

In the years that followed, Charlie and Winnie rimmed the fields with some 300 nest boxes for Mountain bluebirds and Tree swallows, built and erected houses for Black-capped chickadees, Purple martins and Northern flickers, and established a huge program for feeding winter birds.

The Ellis Farm quickly gained recognition as a sanctuary for all wildlife and Charlie became widely known as Mr. Bluebird, a title bestowed by the well known naturalist, Kerry Wood.

In the early 1980s, Charlie’s greatest concern was the fate of “his” Bluebirds should he no longer be able to tend his nest box trail.  Coincidently, Union Carbide was looking for a site to build an ethylene Glycol plant.  During negotiations to acquire Charlie’s land, Carbide was willing to be legally bound to make provision for the care of Charlie’s birds in the future.  Following a suggestion by the Red Deer River Naturalists, Carbide agreed to continue the Ellis legacy through a non-profit charitable company, Ellis Bird Farm Ltd.  Union Carbide later merged with Dow Chemical and Dow continued to support EBF.  In 2004, MEGlobal Canada was formed as a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Petrochemical Industries Company of Kuwait,  MEGlobal provides annual funding to EBF for operations.

We’ve all heard the words “in the right place at the right time” and this saying applies to birding in a huge way.  On our birding road trip of Tuesday May 17th this point was made clear in a very obvious way.

We had been searching for the Northern shrike in all the places we had seen the family of 5 last year with hopes they had returned in 2022 to raise another family.  Back and forth we drove along a stretch of road to no avail, so we decided to take a side trip and check out an active Bald eagle nest.  After seeing the nesting Bald eagles a discussion followed as to whether or nor we should continue along the dirt road heading south or drive back and head further east in the hopes of seeing our Badger.  The decision was made and as it turned out we were in the right place at the right time.  As we approached the intersection where we would turn East, right beside the road in a small tree sat a Northern shrike.  Somehow three people had made the right decision!

As it turns out, when we stopped to think about “the right place at the right time” other rewards came up—like the time we took a “No Exit” dirt road (we love No Exit dirt roads  rarely travelled so relatively quiet, we have come across some amazing sightings) came to the end, turned around to drive back and right in front of the car a Badger ran across the road and into his burrow in the roadside ditch only to turn around and come back out and defiantly stand his ground so we were able to get some photos of him which we shared in our May 2022 newsletter.

The point is—when you go out birding try to be flexible and remember always—birds fly and therefore tend to move around.  We all have a list of birds we would love to see, but being in the right place at the right time always plays a huge part.  Whenever and wherever you go birding, you are sure to see birds—maybe birds you have already seen before but sometimes we get lucky and are in “the right place at the right time”.  One thing is for sure—whatever birds you see it will add joy to the experience.

The scientific name of the Northern shrike is lanius excubitor translated to “butcher watchman.”  The Northern shrike is also known as “the butcher bird” because of its unusual practice of impaling its prey on thorns or barbed wire, much in the way butchers hang their meat in their shops.