Ottawa Citizen » World of Birds

Loons are back on their nests at this time of spring, but a leading loon scientist says we’re unlikely to see a lot of chicks this year. The problem: Black flies, though not the kind that a...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/its-a-bad-spring-for-hatching-baby-loons

It didn’t take long for people talking about the coronavirus to make up a word that sounds like it, just for comic relief: coronosaurus. And soon the cartoons and costumes of dinosaurs i...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/yes-there-really-was-a-coronasaurus-and-it-was-discovered-in-canada

While we are stuck at home and worried, there is no better time to remind ourselves of the wonders of spring. In today’s Science of Spring, TOM SPEARS looks at early flowers and insects — ea...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-spring-for-the-earliest-flowers-and-bugs-look-up

While we are stuck at home and worried about the future, there is no better time to remind ourselves of the wonders of spring. In today’s Science of Spring, Tom Spears looks at growing optimis...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-spring-better-news-for-loons

With people stuck at home and worried about their future, there is no better time to remind ourselves of the wonders of spring. The change of season is all around us with many facets of backyard...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-spring-full-steam-ahead

Roz Dakin went to Ecuador to study a little tropical bird called a manakin and learn about its social behaviour, especially its curious way of making friends. She came back with unexpected ne...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/for-bird-and-humans-more-friends-doesnt-mean-better-friends

Today we continue our annual look at what makes this season special, a time when nature is doing much more than just going to sleep for three months. Welcome to the Science of Winter. Birds k...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-winter-birds-know-in-advance-when-a-winter-storm-is-coming

The Nature Conservancy of Canada has purchased 119 hectares of granite ridges, wetlands, stream banks and forests in a rocky area north of Kingston known as the Frontenac Arch. The area known...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/nature-conservancy-preserves-rocky-wilderness-near-kingston

Nature needs protecting — and nowhere more than in cities, which is where most Canadians get their contact with wild things, says the Nature Conservancy of Canada. And it has good news. The...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/nature-making-a-comeback-in-canadian-cities

The little duck seemed to think it was a loon. So did its loon foster parents. But whatever went on in the mallard’s little fuzzy head, this bird has now flown. Southbound, presumably, i...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/tale-of-duckling-raised-by-loons-has-a-happy-ending

Thousands of gulls poop on the Ottawa River shoreline, and years ago the city came up with a plan to keep them away from Britannia Beach. It strung wires on poles at a height that annoys the ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/spring-floods-washed-out-gull-control-plan

Against all odds, a baby mallard duck being raised by loons this summer is growing and thriving, and learning to behave like a loon. But life is never simple. This could cause future trouble ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-duckling-raised-by-loons-is-doing-well-but-has-identity-issues

Spring’s lousy weather is still causing trouble for anyone who wants to go outdoors, though the makers of insect repellent and antihistamines must be laughing. That cool, wet weather was...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/cool-wet-spring-causes-double-trouble-bugs-and-allergies

Postmedia’s series on the Science of Summer returns to its roots, with a puzzling but delightful tale from our favourite loon scientist. Tom Spears looks at this twist on the story of the Ugly...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-those-cute-fuzzy-loon-babies-may-be-imposters

In the end, the Royal swans were no match for Wile E. Coyote. There were once some 40 Royals swans floating on an eight-kilometre stretch of the Rideau River and looking serene, unless you go...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/spears-maybe-the-queen-should-have-given-us-roadrunners

Dinosaurs get the prehistoric glory, but the Canadian Museum of Nature is showing off fossils, casts and life-sized replicas of the world’s other dominant animals from tens of millions of year...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/pterosaurs-take-flight-at-museum-of-nature

A long, cold, wet spring is turning into big trouble for loons trying to raise young. May in Eastern Ontario was an average of 2.2 degrees below the long-term average, Environment Canada anno...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/this-is-a-bad-year-for-breeding-loons

An organization that rescues birds injured by hitting buildings wants to find the dog owner who let his dog kill a wild turkey on Sparks Street on Tuesday. A young female turkey was foraging ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/off-leash-dog-kills-wild-turkey-downtown

Canada geese famously mate for life, but it turns out that some of them aren’t ready for the commitment. A 25-year study of Canada geese with identification collars in Connecticut showed th...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/canada-geese-put-the-v-in-divorce

The Canada jay, a fierce little bird that ranges from Algonquin Park northward, is having trouble with climate. Warm spells keep spoiling its food. Also known as the grey jay, and whiskyja...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/canada-jay-hides-food-for-winter-but-sometimes-natures-freezer-lets-it-spoil

Our region’s biggest woodpecker is a tough, crow-sized bird that sends wood chips flying as it carves gaping holes in tree trunks. Yet it was always afraid of people. Ottawa naturalist Dan ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/reclusive-wilderness-woodpeckers-are-colonizing-ottawa

A combination of cold and snow is probably killing off significant numbers of the first migrating birds in our region, says birder Bruce Di Labio. Migrants leave the south at different tim...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-early-bird-gets-big-trouble-this-year

Michael Runtz recently spent 10 hours staking out the carcass of a deer near Golden Lake, just to see what would drop by. Ravens came first. Then a young bald eagle. Then a golden eagle, foll...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/michael-runtzs-new-book-is-a-love-story-about-algonquin-park

Loons are becoming tamer overall, according to a survey of loons on 200 Wisconsin lakes that began a quarter of a century ago. Individual birds do not become more comfortable around humans ov...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/call-of-the-tame-loons-are-becoming-less-wild-broad-survey-suggests

After two phases of a pilot project went well, Gatineau is opening the henhouse door to urban farmers. Also the beehive door. People with a property of at least 350 square metres can build a ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-birds-and-the-bees-gatineau-opens-door-to-urban-farmers

The habitat of the ultra-rare lazuli bunting that accidentally flew to Ottawa this fall has gone quiet. The scores of birders have migrated elsewhere. For more than a week, birders stood at ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/all-is-now-quiet-for-a-change-for-ottawas-rarest-bird-and-its-neighbours

When Denise Smith spotted a songbird on her backyard feeder, she wasn’t prepared for how rare it would turn out to be, or for having her home staked out by enthusiastic birders. The lazuli ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-rare-bird-landed-then-came-the-flock-of-humans-peering-into-an-ottawa-womans-backyard

Snowy owls have again flown south in large numbers to Eastern Ontario, and now birders are starting to think of this previously rare pattern as the new normal for the Arctic birds. They’re ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/snowy-owl-invasion-is-the-arctic-no-longer-arctic-enough

Ottawa reaches a milestone this Sunday, and people will celebrate by heading out on foot before dawn into the cold and snow to listen for owls. They are unlikely to hear any. Owls are rare in...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/this-sunday-marks-the-100th-anniversary-of-ottawas-christmas-bird-count

Bird lovers who count birds at backyard feeders and send the results to scientists are keeping an extra sharp watch for a disease that has cut the number of house finches by about half. The i...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-mysterious-eye-disease-is-wiping-out-house-finches

The common loon and its haunting cry could disappear from our region in two or three decades, as climate change drives the bird farther north, a new analysis suggests. The National Audubon...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/last-call-climate-change-may-someday-force-loons-from-ottawa-area-analysis-suggests

The female loon on a Wisconsin lake was still swimming, looking for all the world like one of those Second World War photos of an aircraft shot full of holes that somehow made it home. The up...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-those-unbreakable-unbeakable-loons

The baby killdeer that hatched at Bluesfest after its parents left with their first three chicks is recovering nicely, and it has made a friend. Nearly two weeks old now, it is out of an inc...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/fourth-baby-killdeer-recovering-making-friends

Postmedia’s popular Science of Summer series is back, in its usual on-again, off-again way. Today Tom Spears looks at an oddity: Birders have found at least two dozen snowy owls summering in S...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-snowy-owls-come-south-in-july

Staff at the Canadian Tire store in Kanata are coping with their annual crop of baby robins produced by parents that just don’t care about letting people shop. Birder Bruce Di Labio found o...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/robins-come-home-to-roost-in-the-perennials-aisle

Birds have migrated north in large numbers in recent weeks — an early gamble that is now forcing some to do a U-turn, and others to starve. A number of people in Ottawa have heard Canada ge...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/birds-flew-north-looking-for-spring

Backyard chicken coops — banned in Ottawa — are taking off in Gatineau, where the city proposes to expand its small experiment in urban farming to allow coops for 200 homes. The expansio...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/urban-chickens-banned-in-ottawa-are-flocking-to-gatineau

It was Friday when Jill Woods got a phone call: Please come and pick up 100-plus abandoned finches and some canaries for good measure. Woods runs Feathered Haven Parrot Rescue in Smiths Falls...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/rescuers-flock-to-finches-found-in-foreclosed-house

Another nearly-frozen bird has turned up in Ottawa long after it should have flown south, but this one lived. The black-crowned night heron was looking for food in open water last week, with ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/another-bird-in-ottawa-neglects-to-migrate-but-survives

The robins that stayed in Ottawa all last winter have done the sensible thing instead this year. Ottawa’s annual Christmas Bird Count confirmed it this weekend: While thousands upon thousan...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/this-wont-be-another-winter-with-robins

The next classroom built at a public school in Casselman will be three metres square, unheated, and full of hens. The hen coop will be built in the spring at l’Académie de la Seigneurie, ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/hens-set-to-flock-to-school-in-casselman

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 aroun...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/winter-is-bad-news-for-birds-that-forgot-to-fly-south

Monty Brigham was a star hockey player at Nepean High School in the 1960s, a standout track athlete, strong football player too. But the teenager was quietly building a reputation in a very diff...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/monty-brigham-1944-2017-the-capitals-early-birder

Birders have been flocking to Britannia to see a little grey fluffball: a bird that shouldn’t be found this side of New Mexico or Colorado. The black-throated gray warbler is native to the...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/southwest-u-s-songbird-pays-rare-visit-to-ottawa

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 al...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/elizabeth-le-geyt-1914-2017-citizens-bird-lady-inspired-generation-of-naturalists

An injured hawk that flew away from its determined rescuer would have stood a better chance of survival if bystanders had tried to capture it, says Anouk Hoedeman of Safe Wings Ottawa. As it ...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/injured-bird-of-prey-flies-to-unknown-fate-after-kent-street-crash

Our Science of Summer series continues as the August days become shorter. Today Tom Spears looks at a potential risk for baby birds born late in the summer. This summer has been torture for l...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-good-news-for-baby-loons

Summer’s at its height, and Postmedia’s Tom Spears looks at the science of summer — the way we connect with the all-too-short season we revere. Ring-billed gulls — we mostly just call...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-ottawas-favourite-gulls-are-actually-newcomers

A songbird from Western Canada that was rescued from freezing after it somehow strayed to Pakenham needs human assistance to fly home. The Bullock’s oriole was rescued in January 2016 and t...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/going-to-vancouver-have-space-for-a-bird

As tent caterpillars thrive in and around the national capital in 2017, Ottawa naturalist Dan Brunton describes an infestation across the Prairies of “biblical” proportions. “I just co...

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/head-west-to-see-a-real-tent-caterpillar-infestation-ottawa-naturalist-says