Dear friend,

With appreciation,

Sara Dubois
Manager, Wildlife Services

PS. You can multiply your impact! Forward this message to friends, family and colleagues.

The babies are coming!

Across the province, wildlife rehabilitation centres are preparing for baby season, the annual flood of baby birds and mammals which typically begins in April and continues through to September.

Centres are busy readying nurseries, stocking up on special formulas and even extending their business hours to accommodate animals found as a result of lengthening daylight. Now would be a great opportunity to support your local wildlife rehabilitation centre with donations of money and materials. See the “wish list” for the BC SPCA’s Wild ARC for ideas how what might be the perfect wildlife baby shower gift!

You can prepare for baby season, too! Find out how best to respond if you come across a baby wild animal during this busy season.

Photo credit: Christina Carrieres, Senior Wildlife Rehabilitator

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Author & journalist Nicholas Read at the Wild ARC open house

Nicholas Read, author of The Salmon Bears: Giants of the Great Bear Rainforest and The Sea Wolves: Living Wild in the Great Bear Rainforest will be at the BC SPCA Wild ARC open house on March 31 and April 1 to launch his newest book for young readers called City Critters: Wildlife in the Urban Jungle.

Filled with photographs (many from our annual Wildlife-In-Focus urban wildlife photo contest!) and entertaining facts, this book looks at how wild animals survive in the big city and how we can continue sharing space with them.

Nicholas is donating all of his proceeds from the sales of City Critters to animal charities, including $1000 to Wild ARC. Come support the BC SPCA and get a signed copy of City Critters!

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Snowy owls grace the southern B.C. coast

If you aren’t a “birder” you can be forgiven for not knowing that Greater Vancouverites were treated to a rare winter phenomenon – snowy owls visiting Boundary Bay in Ladner. What’s the big deal? “The last time this many came this far south was seven years ago,” said one of the scores of avid birders, jockeying for space along the dike to position high resolution cameras and scopes.

Snowy owl migration is perplexingly complex and not well understood. Some years the owls remain on their arctic tundra breeding grounds, the next year they may travel primarily down the eastern coast. This year, large numbers chose the B.C. coast.

Their striking white plumage contrasts with the drab browns and greys of the logs and stumps upon which they perch scattered amongst the green marsh grass of the bay.

One can truly appreciate their massive size when a soaring merlin looks dwarfed as it passes only metres away from the perching snowy owls. At least 30 were spotted at Boundary Bay, grouped together in twos and threes along the broad, flat strip of shoreline. The owls rest during the day, and at night hunt for rodents and birds. But as spring arrives, they’ll head back to the northern tundra where they will disperse, to begin nesting and raising their young.
 

Talking Trash

Not only do floating plastic lids and cigarette butts get mistakenly eaten by shore birds, but they feed the plastic bits to their young, condemning them to a slow and painful death.

With spring (and spring cleaning) just around the corner, now is the perfect time to reflect on the impact our trash has on wildlife and what we can do to help.

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WILDLIFE TIP – Pooches can put pipers in peril

We’ve all seen it. Dogs romping along the beach rousing flocks of shorebirds who swirl around waiting for the dogs to leave. Meanwhile the dogs look approvingly at their guardians. Great fun! No one was hurt. The dogs and the birds get some exercise. Unfortunately though, these episodes can condemn flocks of migrating birds to death. Not right away, but later in flight when then run out of energy trying to get to the next estuary stopover.
 
It is critical that migrating shore birds build their food reserves rapidly at specific locations along the west coast. The Fraser delta is one of only a handful of stopover habitats migrating birds have on their annual migrations along the entire west coast of North America.

Along with insects and worms, researchers from Simon Fraser University have only just discovered that the primary diet making up 70% of a bird’s energy source is a paper-thin slime of biofilm found on tidal mudflats. Migrating birds such as sandpipers, red-necked stints and dunlins suck up the slurry. With such a short timeframe to stay ahead of the weather, shorebirds must spend as much time as possible on the ground eating so they have the energy to fly hundreds of kilometres to their next stop.

Already many species of shorebirds are in decline due to habitat destruction, so having people and dogs on sensitive bird foraging shorelines in critical times during spring and fall migration, adds another threat to shorebird survival – a threat easily avoided if we think about how our actions can impact other creatures.