Enjoying the birds of the backyard
Calgary teen saved lives by donating organs
During a recent snowfall, the garden shrouded in a blanket of pure white snow, Mark’s wife, Mary, exclaimed, “The cardinals illuminate the yard!”
During the long dark days of winter, every Canadian looks for illumination. The temptation to find it might be turning on your TV or iPad. But there is another way to shorten winter, and that is by turning to nature.
The native birds that stay over winter in our climate provide a window into something extraordinary. When, in our history, has there been a better time to slow down and observe avian activity than during the pandemic?
This past weekend, the Great Backyard Bird Count was held, a chance to count birds and, if possible, name them and record the results on the website.
This annual four-day event attracted more than 250,000 participants last year worldwide, 40,000 in Canada. Together, they counted more than 27 million birds, almost 7,000 species.
Although it wrapped up on Monday, outdoor enthusiasts can still enjoy observing backyard birds.
Between us, we have 16 bird feeders and we feed birds a mixture of quality, corn-free seed, pure black oil sunflower, Nyjer seed for the little songlets like nuthatches, suet for chickadees and woodpeckers and bird quality peanuts for even more woodpeckers (always salt free).
Here are our favourite birds this time of year and how best to attract them:
Blue jays: No need to wait for the season opener (baseball joke) as the jays are lurking in your nearest cedar hedge waiting for peanuts. In the shell or out of the shell, bird peanuts are like candy to these birds. Black oil sunflower seeds also work well. Members of the crow family, they are smart, noisy and bossy. When they are around, most other birds step aside.
Chickadees: Cute, friendly (you can train them to take seed from your open hand) and chirpy, chickadees get their name from their song which is unmistakable from quite a distance. Black oil sunflower seeds are best.
Nuthatches: One of the few birds that travels on a tree trunk head-first, they are the kid on the monkey bars that has no fear. They are also entertaining and enjoy Nyjer seed and black oil sunflower seeds.
Downy and hairy woodpeckers: Downy, the smaller of the two, and hairy look alike but have different stature. Suet is a sure attractant as are raw, peanuts out of the shell. Again, go salt free as salt is not good for birds. Look for the distinct red flash on the back of the head of the males and the black and white markings on feathers that look like a black and white TV on the fritz.
Red bellied woodpecker: Known best for a brilliantly colour red head, their red belly is hard to see, but it is there. Feed the same as downy and hairy woodpeckers.
Cardinal: You must love the outstanding colour of the male cardinal contrasted against the snow. It’s a true winter wonder worth watching. Feed them the same as blue jays.
Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster, tree advocate and member of the Order of Canada. His son, Ben, is a fourth-generation urban gardener and graduate of University of Guelph and Dalhousie University in Halifax. Follow them at markcullen.com, @markcullengardening and on Facebook.
CALGARY — When Marit McKenzie was in Grade 12, she watched as her best friend struggled with complications from a childhood liver transplant. It prompted the artsy, empathetic Alberta teenager to become an advocate.
Marit made her senior school project about the importance of organ donation. Then she went a step further, selling pieces of her artwork at the Otafest anime convention in Calgary, raising $500 for the David Foster Foundation, which works to financially support families of children undergoing an organ transplant.
Marit also asked her mother to co-sign her organ donor card.
For her parents, it was all typical of their daughter.
“She just always was aware of what was going on around her and engaged with the world and thoughtful about other people,” says her father, Bruce. “She was just one of those people that helped everybody.”
Her parents had no idea the impact their daughter’s selfless gesture would soon make on the lives of another family on the other side of the country, and several other families as well, helping the McKenzies find meaning at perhaps the lowest moment of their lives.
In 2013, in her freshman year at the University of Calgary, Merit died suddenly. An acne medication is thought to have caused clots to restrict the flow of blood through her lungs, and resulted in a massive pulmonary embolism that led to four cardiac arrests.
When Marit passed, her heart was donated to Tanner Fitzpatrick, a 12-year-old hockey player from Newfoundland.
Tanner had been receiving treatment for dilated cardiomyopathy, an illness that causes the heart to become enlarged so that it cannot effectively pump blood to the rest of the body. Less than a year after Tanner became ill, doctors determined he would need a new heart.
Expecting the process to take some time, the Fitzpatricks headed to Toronto, where Tanner could be close to Sick Kids Hospital should a heart become available. It took just days before the family received the call they were waiting for: there was a heart for Tanner.
“I would call it the purest shock I ever felt,” says Tanner, who now works as an electrician in Newfoundland. “It was something I’ve never felt again. It was a lot to process.”
Organ donation continues to be a difficult decision for Canadians, where 90 per cent of the population support organ donation, yet only 23 per cent register as donors, reports Canadian Blood Services. The low number of donors can translate into deadly consequences for the more than 4,500 people waiting for an organ donation — 260 of whom will die each year, according to The Organ Project, a not-for-profit founded by Eugene Melnyk, the owner and chairman of the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club. That’s about five deaths each week, or one death every 30 hours.
The organ most in demand is the kidney, reports the charity, with 76 per cent of Canadians on the waiting list in need of a kidney transplant. The liver is the next at 10 per cent, with lungs at six per cent. Another four per cent of those on the donation list are hoping to get a new heart. The average wait-listed kidney patient will wait four years for their new organ.
A donor, then, can have a sizeable impact.
Marit’s heart, liver, pancreas and kidneys were successfully transplanted in four separate surgeries, according to the David Foster Foundation. Her donated corneas gave two more patients sight, while bone tissue and tendons were preserved for future reconstructive surgeries.
“One (organ donor) can save eight lives, or improve the life of 75 people,” says Michael Ravenhill, CEO of the David Foster Foundation. “That life legacy that they would leave, that anyone would leave, would be incredible.”
Bruce McKenzie was not aware that Marit had decided to become an organ donor until the physicians asked if the parents would consider the transplants.
“He was a very brave man,” says Bruce of the physician who spoke to them that day.
“He said, ‘Would you consider organ donation?’ We’re sitting there, we’re just in shock. And Susan ... said, ‘Yes, this is what Marit wanted, she already had me sign in her donor card when she was 17.’
“What I understand is then the next day, the heart flew from Calgary to Toronto.”
The work of researchers, doctors and volunteers, as well as the selfless acts of living and deceased donors, is making a difference. In 2019, more than 3,000 transplants were performed from 1,434 donors, an increase from approximately 2,500 transplants from 1,212 donors in 2015, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
The waiting list also appears to be shrinking, down to 4,527 in 2019 from 4,712 in 2015.
Tanner’s surgery was a resounding success, and he was well enough to be discharged from SickKids Hospital to the nearby Ronald McDonald House after only a few days. He returned home to Newfoundland four months later.