Wild About Winter
The Wild About Winter series is four weeks of outdoor educational opportunities for adults, youth and families in Clearview Township and across South Georgian Bay to learn about birding, wildlife and our local habitat from Simcoe County's Birds Canada Ambassador, Andrew Major.
About Andrew Major, Georgian Bay Wildlife
Andrew Major was born in Frobisher Bay, NWT and grew up in the countryside of Meaford, ON. He currently lives in Clearview Township and brings a wealth of knowledge as a Wildlife Technician who studied at Sir Sandford Fleming College.
Over the past 10 years he has run educational wildlife tours through Georgian Bay Wildlife. Andrew has also been contracted throughout Canada to conduct bird, aquatic invert, fish, and herpetile environmental impact surveys.
He is the Birds Canada ambassador for Simcoe County and has been involved with the Great Backyard Bird Count for several years.
In addition to his love and passion for wildlife, Andrew holds an Honours degree in Classical History for Queen's University and a master’s degree in Roman Late Antiquity Studies from University of Ottawa.
To learn more about Georgian Bay Wildlife, please visit their website www.georgianbaywildlife.com or follow Georgian Bay Wildlife on Facebook.
Georgian Bay Wildlife in partnership with Clearview Township, is excited to launch a 4-week series for local families and area residents to learn more about birds and wildlife in our region. There will be a new topic each week for you to discover and learn about, then get outside and explore your backyard or parks and trails nearby. What will you discover this winter?
The Snowy Owl
Scientific Name: Bubo scandiacus
About the Snowy Owl
Each year as winter sets in and the arctic sends its cold blistery winds south, you can be sure arctic migrants are close behind; one notable visitor is the majestic Snowy Owl. The scientific name is Bubo scandiacus.
We know snowy owls breed in the arctic and migrant south each winter, but where can they be found when they arrive? These birds prefer hunting habitats that mimic their arctic summer grounds, so they are most comfortable in open fields and along frozen shorelines. You can spot snowy owls driving along Highway 91, Fairgrounds Road, Highway 26 or on rural roads that are surrounded by extensive farmland. These owls are quite comfortable on the ground but don’t forget to look up, because they love sitting on telephone poles, barns, houses, hay bales and even trees! From these heights they use their phenomenal eyesight to spot their prey. Field mice, meadow voles, lemmings, weasels, hares, and rabbits make up their mammalian diet and ducks, gulls, and grebes make up their avian diet.
Snowy owls are Canada’s largest owl, weighing around 4lbs, with a wingspan of 1.37m or about 4 ½ feet. Telling male from female can be challenging especially when they look alike! Basically, male adult snowy owls are white. The whiter they are, the older they are. Female adults will show dark barring all over when young and the barring will fade as they age. The top of a female’s head will show barring as well, as a male’s head will be white. Female snowy owls are also larger than male snowy owls, a condition known as reverse sexual dimorphism. Juveniles have extensive dark barring all over their bodies and can be confused with young adult females. Young and old, they all share the same piercing yellow eyes.
Snowy owls show up each year in varying numbers and every several years make a large appearance called an irruption. An irruption occurs when high numbers of snowy owls migrate south for the winter. When prey populations are high, owl broods will match resulting in more owls making the trip to their wintering grounds. Here is a link for more information about snowy owl irruptions: www.projectsnowstorm.org/what-is-an-irruption.
Contrary to a popular myth, snowy owls are not starving when they reach their wintering grounds. Years of research into their body conditions have shown plenty of animals with above average body fat, also known as subcutaneous fat stored in their chest and wings.
Snowy owls are solitary birds that sit a lot and hunt alone during the day and night, so they are both diurnal and nocturnal. This makes capturing a picture of them much easier, especially when they are fairly calm around traffic.
Tips to help you photograph the Snowy Owl:
Please ensure personal safety and the surrounding area when looking for owls or any bird while driving. Busy highways are not the safest place to track and take pictures; rather, quiet side roads are preferred. Remember to use your signals and pull over as not to interrupt flow of traffic. On this note of safety, there are ethics for birding as well; the welfare of these owls is paramount if we want them to propagate. Spooking them or habituating them to food could lead to accidental fatalities. Take caution when walking onto a field, that field is owned by someone who may not want you treading on their property, so please show respect to property owners too. Unlike hawks and falcons, snowy owls are really chill birds and will likely sit long enough for you to snap a picture of a lifetime!
Take this information to go by downloading the Snowy Owl PDF
In partnership with 95.1 The Peak FM, Andrew Major is on the "Talk of the Town" every Friday morning at 6:30 AM. Listen here: 95.1 The Peak FM Talk of Town - Snowy Owl
Wild About Winter program series:
Georgian Bay Wildlife in partnership with Clearview Township, has launched a 4-week series for local families and area residents to learn more about birds and wildlife in our region.
Eastern Coyote
Scientific Name: Canis latrnas
About the Eastern Coyote
You will most likely hear the Canis latrans or “singing dog” before you ever see one. Calling out to pack members and yipping and whopping with excitement make anybody stop and listen with curiosity, delight and perhaps a wee bit of anxiety. The Eastern Coyote is a blend of the Western coyote and gray wolf. When gray wolves were pushed to their northern limits in eastern North America, western coyotes moved and hybridized with gray wolves. The result was a smaller canid than the wolf but a larger coyote than the western species. The coyotes we see and hear now are about half the size of gray wolf. A key identification feature to tell them apart is to watch their tail when they move. Coyote tails will flow downwards and wolf tails will flow straight back. Also, coyotes have a tendency to stop and look back when running away or when they hear a noise. Another difference is that wolves form large packs while a pack for a coyotes consists of a breeding pair with their most recent pups.
Coyotes breed for life and will seek out dens to rear their young, which are born in March and April. Males have to hustle to feed all those mouths so its al a carte everything. Coyotes are generalists which means they can live in most climates and areas and eat just about anything. They love eating rabbits, hares and deer in the winter but enjoy rodents, snakes, frogs, birds, berries, apples. Turkey feathers were recently found in our bush that were torn from the body, and Thanksgiving has long passed!
Like them or not, coyotes are integrated in our society whether in an urban setting or agricultural. They’re excellent at adapting and living in and around us. Most of the time we don’t know they’re around until dusk sets in and they sing that unforgettable song. Coyotes may be the trickster in Native American lore but they should always be taken seriously. Occasionally they will prey on livestock and if accustomed to humans will distressfully predate cats and dogs. The Ministry of Natural Resources is a great resource for wildlife conflict prevention and education.
Take this information to go by downloading the Eastern Coyote PDF
Wild About Winter program series:
Georgian Bay Wildlife in partnership with Clearview Township, has launched a 4-week series for local families and area residents to learn more about birds and wildlife in our region.
The Snowshoe Hare
Scientific Name: Lepus americanus
The Snowshoe Hare, with the rabbit, were once classified in the same order as rodents, but are now recognized in their own order, Lagomorpha. They live strictly in North America, in heavily wooded and shrubby forests. Their habitat needs to be low canopy to offer the protection they need from predators. They will establish runways throughout the forest that act like hare highways. Throughout the summer months, snowshoe hares will have brown fur, but will shed in the fall to expose long guard hairs that turn it all white, an adaptation to match the climate. This gives hares an advantage to disguise from predators. And next time you are in the forest snowshoeing, scan the snow for similar tracks. They were coined “snowshoe” because their hind feet leave a track identical to a snowshoe. This evolutionary advantage allows the snowshoe hare to travel on top of the snow without sinking.
It’s good hares live in the forest, they’re dominantly herbivores, with a diet consisting of grasses, plants and bark of many species of trees and bushes, including berry canes. During the winter, hares will debark fallen limbs, bite and strip the bark off apple trees and reduce canes to a mere image of their summer selves. When hares debark wood, they are browsing the tender cambium layer. The cambium layer, which is the layer beneath the tough outer bark, is composed of xylem and phloem, which act like veins of nutrients that support the tree.
They do share the same menu with rodents and white-tailed deer; but they have tell tale signs of how they eat that sets them apart. Rodents have smaller incisors so their debarking is neat and shallow, whereas hares will browse into the cambium and sometimes leave a ripped mess of bark when they make bite marks. Compared to deer, both will browse tips of shrubs and low bushes and canes but hares will leave a neat 45 degree angle bite browse mark at the end of twig or cane whereas deer leave a tip that looks like its be crudely ripped off. So now you know whose eating your spiraeas!
Snowshoe hares lack manners; they poop where they eat. In the winter, you’ll know where hares have been when little round pellets are left beneath a debarked maple sapling. Hares and rabbits will have brown, round pellets, whereas deer will leave oval shaped pellets of the same colour. Hares take their lack of manners to another level, though; they eat their own dung. This procedure is called refection, and involves hares eating a soft form pellet. They do this because their stomach’s fermentation process is not very extensive so by re-eating their feces, they are taking in more nutrients, thus increasing digestive efficiency and recapturing nutrients. The final product is that hard brown, round pellet lying in the snow.
As the winter relents, male and female hares will start mating courtships. Males, or bucks get one whole day to make it “count” with a single female, or doe in a display called “courtship parades”. One female will travel and browse with several males stopping periodically to chase and leap over each other than breed. She will have a litter of up to 13 leverets about 36 days later. Litter sizes differ based on the number of litters in the year. When born, the babies are precocial, which means they have fur and eyes are wide open, unlike rabbit leverets, which are born altricial.
Snowshoe hares have lots of young probably because they are a food source for so many predators and a long life expectancy is not in their favour, even if they can leap 3 meters to escape. Some predators include: coyotes, red fox, fisher, long-tailed weasel, Canada lynx, bobcat, hawks and owls, but on occasion, the code of the forest changes and hares will change up their diet and favour protein; they will eat small mammals like voles and mice and will eat the carrion of dead animals including the ones that hunt them. I was told a story once of a pack hares in the artic, that attacked and predated an artic fox; having watched Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail many times, I wasn’t surprised!
Wild About Winter program series:
Georgian Bay Wildlife in partnership with Clearview Township, has launched a 4-week series for local families and area residents to learn more about birds and wildlife in our region.
Ermine
Scientific Name Mustela erminea
The Ermine, also known as the Short-tailed weasel, is a member of the Mustelid family or Weasel family. It is the second smallest weasel in this family of carnivores and most widely spread of its kind in Canada. The ermine gained a lot of attention during European settlement when it’s luxurious fur was sought after and worn by aristocracy and the wealthy. It’s called the Stoat in Europe and its fur fashioned some of history’s greatest figures and still does. The crown of Queen Elizabeth is lined with ermine fur and the coronation robe matches. The latin genus, erminea, means “white fur”; thus trapping occurred in December and January, when the brown fur had molted and the white guard hairs took over. If you are on the lookout for an ermine, it will be all white with a black tip on the tail in winter, and is rich brown dorsally with a white underbelly and black tip on the tail in the summer.
The ermine is very adaptable and lives all throughout Canada, including in your backyard, if you support the habitat for it. It can live in open tundra to boreal forest, mixed forest, riparian edge, lakeshores, meadows boundaries, and prefers lots of cover of foliage and rocks. The habitat is very diverse, so learning its tracks and signs to watch for is how you’ll it’s know it’s around. Although it is a solitary animal it is extremely curious by nature and its tracks don’t lie. When tracking an ermine in the winter, you may be initially struck with confusion at what is going on, as weasels are haphazard lopers and seem to go wherever they wish. They don’t follow tracks of other animals or run along trails. They will perform a 2 by 2 lope, which is a characteristic track for mustelids in snow, and lots of tunneling. Just picture a slinky bounding in the snow, at the very least, you’ll be entertained.
When tracking ermine, it does look like they have a lot of energy judging by the constant motion portrayed in the tracks; the truth is, ermine have a resting metabolic rate of 10 percent higher than any other animal of their weight. Being long and skinny and active in the winter means they loose a lot of heat and so need to hunt and eat constantly. The catch for ermine is, they have very small stomachs and can only eat less than an ounce or so every few hours, so they need to constantly eat to stay alive. Being long and slender makes them effective hunters but it has its costs. A remedy for the ermine is to cache its food so that no matter the circumstances, it has a readily available food source. And this is where the ermine and weasels in general get a bad rap. The most proverbial anecdote of a weasel is they will mercilessly kill every chicken in the coop with uncontrolled passion; when in fact, they are only adding to their stockpile, the very endless supply they need to keep the fires burning
Ermine have evolved special cutting carnasials, incisors capable of fatal bites. They wrap around their prey with their long bodies and kill with a distinctive bite to the base of the skull, severing the spinal column. If you have a rodent problem, invite one of these guys into your basement, and the problem will be solved. Prey for the ermine include rodents such as mice, voles, squirrels, and then reptiles, amphibians, birds, eggs and insects round out their diet. They have a tendency to usurp prey’s dens and fill it with their kills. Being small makes them lethal killers of small animals, but makes them vulnerable to being prey themselves. Fishers, marten, coyotes, fox, bobcats, house cats, snakes and hawks and owls feast on ermine, when they can catch them. I’ve tracked ermine to the point the tracks suddenly stopped in the middle of a field and a little blood spot was all that remained.
Ermine also utilize a process called delayed implantation to time the birth of their babies, or kits. They breed in late spring and the fertilized egg will not attach to the uterus for up to 10 months, typically when its safe to rear young and food can be steadily provided. This is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure the survival of species. Outside of providing parental care to their young, ermine are solitary and recluse showing little social behavior. You might say, they would be tough to get along with. If I were to give one anthropomorphic trait to the ermine, it would be sociopathy, which comes honestly; they need to kill a lot in order to survive. Murderous chicken coop sprees are actually calculated and lack emotion. We can’t fault them for being tenacious killers, but I won’t be inviting them to a BBQ anytime soon.
Wild About Winter program series:
Georgian Bay Wildlife in partnership with Clearview Township, has launched a 4-week series for local families and area residents to learn more about birds and wildlife in our region.
Every year, the Great Backyard Bird Count presented by Birds Canada happens on Family Day Weekend. It's an annual four-day event that engages bird enthusiasts of all ages around the world in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are. Anyone can participate, from beginners to experts. You can count for as little as 15 minutes on a single day, or for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy – and it helps the birds!
Participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count
Andrew Major is the Simcoe County Ambassador for Birds Canada and he will be hosting a free webinar to increase awareness and knowledge about the Great Backyard Bird Count. There is also a free Common Birds of Simcoe County checklist that you can download to help you track and record the birds you see.
Hey students!
You can earn up to four hours of volunteer time towards your Highschool Volunteer Hours by participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count, please contact the Clearview Youth Centre for help filling in the volunteer hours form. Email the Youth Centre staff at youthcentre@clearview.ca
COVID-19 Statement: Watching birds is a safe and enjoyable activity we can do during the global pandemic. For the 2021 Great Backyard Bird Count, we strongly urge participants to comply with all current and local COVID-19 health regulations and guidelines. This includes, but is not limited to, avoiding non-essential travel, visiting trails and parks close to your neighbourhood and with members of your own household, practicing physical distancing while bird watching and wearing a mask when birding with others.
Register your household to participate in the Wild About Birding: An introduction to birdwatching & identification Webinar, a free online webinar to learn more about local birding and how you and your family can participate in the Backyard Bird Count. The webinar will be led by Andrew Major, a Wildlife Technician and Simcoe County Ambassador for Birds Canada.
The registration deadline is Friday February 12 at 10 AM. Registration is now CLOSED.
Download the Common Birds of Simcoe County checklist to help you track and count the birds in your own backyard! Local residents can also visit parks and trails nearby.
The Recreation & Tourism Map has a listing of local parks in Clearview Township. *Please continue to follow local health guidelines.*