Ottawa residents are heeding the call to help those injured Bohemian waxwings that flew into a glass walkway over the weekend at city hall. The Wild Bird Care Centre on Moodie Drive had asked for donations of berries and grapes to help feed those injured birds. A steady stream of folks have been dropping off goods but also carrying injured and dying waxwings.
About 30 waxwings are currently being cared for at the centre on Moodie drive; they've been injured by collisions with windows all over the city.
Shaun Gibbons carefully carries his precious cargo into the Wild Bird Care Centre on Moodie Drive.
“I feel terrible about this,” he says. Gibbons was watching the flock of Bohemian waxwings in a tree outside his house when all of a sudden they took off.
“First one hit,” he tells Patty McLaughlin at the Wild Bird Care Centre, “and a few seconds later, another one hit. Then I got a box and brought them here.”
Both birds collided with a window on his house. One of them died, the other is badly injured.
“We’re going to let him rest a bit,” McLaughlin tells Gibbons, “and then we’ll do his physical.”
Moments after he leave, another man brings in a Bohemian Waxwing that hit his office window.
McLaughlin explains this is the winter migration period for the Bohemian Waxwings that are heading up north to Alaska, trying to fill up on as many berries as they can before they leave.
“On sunny days like this,” she says, “the sun is hitting the windows and making it like a mirror, reflecting the trees and the waxwings are seeing the trees and they think they can land on them and that's why they're hitting the windows.”
Over the weekend, 34 waxwings were killed and more than a dozen injured after they struck a windowed walkway at city hall.
Seven injured birds were taken here to the Wild Bird Care Centre, where they are gobbling up 2 pounds a day of berries and grapes. Donations have been pouring in from folks affected by the accidental mass kill. Ida-Marie Razeau just lost a loved pet bird and heard our story about the Centre needing donations of grapes and berries and responded with a bag full of them, as did dozens of other residents.
"For us to create habitats where the birds can't survive anymore, it's very sad, it hurts me,” she says.
There are products on the market to prevent birds from flying into windows. They are literally flying off the shelves at Wild Birds Unlimited, a bird supply store on Bank Street. Products like Feather Friendly Collide Escape involve applications on the outside of the window that act as a deterrent to birds, an invisible barrier of sorts.
“There’s certainly been an increased interest (in these products) with the situation that happened at city hall,” says Eric Garrison, the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited.
The products work but they aren't cheap; Feather Friendly sells for $25 a single roll which covers about 100 square feet.
Patty McLaughlin says you can do it on the cheap with ribbon, soap or a highlighter. Using ribbon and tape, hang strips of ribbon a few centimetres apart on the outside of your window. With a bar of soap, squiggle lines over the window, again on the outside. And with a highlighter pen, “Just draw lines, again 10 centimetres apart,” McLaughlin explains, “then do a 5 centimetre grid pattern.”
And, of course, reapply after it rains.
And just a final note on those two injured waxwings that were in the tree outside city hall still yesterday. Anouk Hoedeman with Safe Wings Ottawa managed to rescue one and brought it to the Wild Bird Care Centre where there are lots of grapes waiting for it.
