As the owls begin to migrate through the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory, most of our songbirds have departed. We’ve entered a lull in fall migration since few warblers remain, but the sparrows are trickling south and will not arrive in large numbers until temperatures drop.
Soon Central and South American nations will celebrate Migratory Bird Day on October 11 as our summer visitors reach their wintering homes. Each year a theme is selected for this day, and 2025’s theme is Shared Spaces: Creating Bird-friendly Cities and Communities. It is amazing how, despite so much being different in Mexico, the Caribbean, or Central and South America, the advice they have set out to help our birds down south is identical to what we recommend locally.
Above: Fox Sparrows, like this one captured this past week, are one of the last migrants to start moving through the area. We are still waiting for American Tree Sparrows, the last of all, to arrive.
Step 1: Plant native plants whenever possible. Canada’s 6.2 million lawns are biodiversity deserts devoid of insect food and shelter for birds. Planting a couple Red-osier Dogwood, Red Raspberry, or White Spruce can open up your yard to birds. Step 2: Avoid toxic pesticides and herbicides which obliterate migratory bird’s insect prey, accumulate in their bodies thus diminishing their health, and contaminate their drinking water.
Step 3: Turn off your lights or use motion sensors at night during migration or direct the light down where you need it instead of letting it scatter into the sky. Light pollution can disorient migrating birds, changes their behaviours, and puts them at higher risk of predators. It may even increase window collisions. Which leads us to step 4: Prevent window collisions by closing your curtains at night or adding a simple pattern to the exterior of the glass on your problem windows.
Step 5: Prevent Plastic Pollution. This is especially true for our Latin American neighbours who host Canada’s Tundra breeding shorebirds on their coasts and wetlands. Many birds will mistakenly eat plastic, get tangled in bags or fishing lines, or have a harder time finding food and safe nesting spots when the shore is littered with plastic.
Step 6: Keep Cats Away. Domestic cats are not wild animals and are not part of a healthy Canadian food web. Keeping cats indoors, outdoors in a safe screened-in porch (or catio) or on a leash is perhaps the easiest and cheapest of all recommendations to achieve. If you are transferring Mittens to be an indoor cat, remember that plenty of play time and cuddles can help smooth the transition!
Step 7: Support Bird-friendly Coffee. Clearing the rainforest for coffee plantations destroys our bird’s winter homes. Luckily coffee can be grown sustainably under the natural forest canopy. Not all shade-grown coffee is grown under the rainforest, but some can be grown under banana trees, which is still a better use of the land than sun-grown coffee. Kicking Horse is a widely-available more bird friendly option.
The love for birds transcends borders and, thankfully, so does our ability to help them.
By Robyn Perkins, LSLBO Bander-in-Charge
