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Vaseux Lake Bird Observatory seeing much lower numbers of migratory birds, likely from heatwave, drought, wildfires and habitat changes

Smoke chokes bird numbers

Casey Richardson

It is an unusually slow year at the Vaseux Lake Bird Observatory in the South Okanagan, with around half the birds migrating through the area compared to the numbers over the last few years, likely due to the heatwave, drought and habitat changes.

“It's very noticeable right off the bat, because on the first day, we usually catch a lot of birds. It's one of our busiest days, typically, August 1. This year, we only caught about 25 and in comparison, last year, we had a very, very big opening day with 135 birds,” Matthias Bieber, bander-in-charge said.

This year the volunteers have had about 564 birds in total up until Thursday, which is just slightly below the 20 year history of around 700. But compared to the average over the past five years at about 1000 birds by August, it’s a giant gap.

Back in August of 2019, volunteers were seeing three times more birds than usual.

“This year, we're kind of back down to like what we saw maybe 10 years ago,” Bieber added. “We had that crazy heatwave at the end of June, which may have resulted in a lot of nests just directly failing, like it's too hot for the young to survive. Also, it's been very dry, we've had very little rain.”

A noticeable lack of mosquitoes are in the area too, meaning there's just not as much food for the birds.

“The vegetation isn't as dense as it normally is, not as high. There's less habitat for them.”

Wildfires and smoke in the area could be another big factor.

“We don't know that for sure. But it's very likely that at least some birds were either directly killed by the fires. Nests certainly would have been destroyed by any fires,” Bieber said.

“If the smoke is really dense, they might have to choose an alternate migration route. They might have trouble finding, even escaping a fire if it's really smoky. Some birds don't fly as high as others so they might get lost in the smoke.”

Volunteers will continue to monitor their nets and bird numbers at the lake until Oct. 15, which will really determine the total numbers as migrations continue. The teams use a tracking process with the birds, outfitting them with a harmless, lightweight, numbered aluminum band around one of their legs and checking things like age, weight and sex.

The entire process takes just a few minutes, and the birds fly back into the wild.

“There's a good chance that with climate change and all these different variables that affect climate, like the water, how dry it is, how wet it is, storms, fires, all these things like, the more unpredictable they become, the harder it is for the birds to kind of recover from these sort of events.

“And that's why we're out here doing this research to figure out kind of how the populations are being affected in the long term.”

Bieber added that it’s unclear whether this is a part of a low year in the cycle or a more permanent effect.

“We do know that bird populations are declining globally, especially in the last few decades.”

People can help out locally by keeping their cats inside, putting up specialized bird tape on glass windows, keeping your bird feeders clean and creating habitat for birds by planting native species along with water features.

Bieber said that people should care not only because birds are important to other wildlife, eco-systems, and pollination, but also because they’re beautiful.

“A lot of people love to watch them. Because they're so accessible, they're everywhere. In every habitat, you can find them in the city, you can find them in the forest, anywhere you go, there's always birds there.”

For more information on the Vaseux Lake Bird Observatory, click here.



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