Birds blown in
Wildlife rescue centre getting plenty of calls after Dorian brought southern birds to Atlantic Canada
HALIFAX — Atlantic Canadian critters generally are wily beasts with the experience to survive Dorian but there are a few visitors from southern climes who have to take a brief rest here after riding the hurricane north.
Hope Swinamer, founder of Hope for Wildlife animal rescue in Nova Scotia, said they are inundated with calls to take in birds that normally don’t show up in the region.
“We’ve brought in 20 birds already this morning,” Swinimer said during a phone interview on Wednesday from her car, after she had picked up a bunch of the feathered visitors for transport.
“The best advice is these birds are really exhausted, so keeping your distance, giving them time to rest and recover,” Swinimer said, adding that people should also keep their dogs away from them.
They will eventually head home on their own.
“We’re already seeing signs of them flocking up and leaving again,” she said.
It’s the injured ones that are coming to her Seaforth, N.S.-based rehab centre.
She’s seeing laughing gulls, skimmers and terns coming in, she said.
Local birds have not been immune to Dorian’s wrath, though, as Hope for Wildlife is also getting injured black-backed gulls and herring gulls.
“And we’re seeing, certainly an influx of even pigeons, even city birds,” Swinimer said. “So, we’re getting a variety of all different kinds of birds arriving in and they might have anything from a broken clavicle to a broken wing because they got pushed around during the winds.”
Ian McLaren, past president of the Nova Scotia Bird Society, agreed the visitors will go back where they came from after they recover their energy.
“The migratory birds can read things like the position of the sun at sunrise, that kind of thing, to know where they are, latitude and longitude, and they probably also have magnetic sense,” said the long-time birder who has penned articles on avians going home in the aftermath of hurricanes.
McLaren said the local birds, for the most part, take advantage of the abundance of shelter in Nova Scotia.
“I think that even up in the Eastern Shore, it was probably a good thing for them to squat down and hide and keep out of unsafe places and ride it out,” he said.
“I think that’s true of most small birds in our woods and even in the city. Certainly, the next day there were still lots of starlings around foraging on the lawn with their broods. Some of them actually still are feeding their young off the nest.”
McLaren said the increasing frequency of major storms may be becoming “a bit of a problem,” but tens of thousands of years of evolution in varying conditions have given the birds a base to survive extreme situations.
The same can be said for terrestrial animals.
Swinimer said the staff at Hope for Wildlife was worried about how their resident animals would fare in the storm but they came through.
“The best advice is these birds are really exhausted, so keeping your distance, giving them time to rest and recover.” Hope Swinamer Founder, Hope for Wildlife