Whew!

What a year and I am bloggin again, must be February!! Seed catalogues, nursery catalogues and other remnants of trade shows and mail box findings are at my feet. Honestly though, I have had time only for the nursery catalogues. I need to go through my seed orders and see what I want to plant for next year. . . I have saved some gourd seeds, Cinderella pumpkin seeds and other that I liked from last fall. Also a lot of native flower seeds. This year I am continuing on my trend here to plant for the pollinators, butterflies and birds. As they are struggling still.
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to visit The Owl Foundation in Vineland. It is not open to the public and I only got the opportunity because Audrey Wilson was taking an injured Barred Owl to Kay McKeever's centre.


Audrey was called by a woman who had found an Owl by the train tracks on Burnham Street in Cobourg. The owl had suffered a collision with a train. Audrey is the person to call when you find an injured bird as she has had many years experience in dealing with birds, their injuries and knows what to do and where the bird can get expert medical attention. The Owl Foundation is not open to the public and Audrey had told Kay about me and Kay said I could come with her and the Owl, also joining us on this trip was Louise Schmidt and her husband.
The owl was safely place in a box not much larger than the owl itself and had branches placed at the base for him/her to cling to, holes had been punched in the sides for ventilation. On the way down we should have been counting Red Tail Hawks at the roadside as there were many along the 401, we realized this especially on the way back and I will tell you why later.
Once we arrived at the Foundation I was struck by the large cages and how many there are. There are about 100 hundred cages with links that can be opened to other cages and fly ways that are either used for training in hunting or mating of owls. Kay has been doing this since 1963 because of her love of owls. Her husband whom she married I believe in 1967 joined her in her passion and helped construct and design these networks of cages.
What I learned is that most owls are injured due to human activity. This does not surprise me at all, as I know that human activity is the cause of the largest mass extinction since the last ice age and we will continue this trend as long as we continue to prosper as a species. I find this sad, but I have faced this reality and wish to focus on how we as individuals can help to preserve species.  The human activity that is causing all the injures to owls and raptors is our throwing garbage out of our car windows along side roads and highways. Garbage which includes items that should be saved and composted in your compost at home. Yes, all those banana peels and apple cores that you toss out your window thinking you are adding some health to ditch soil is not, it's killing our birds. The reason why we see so many raptors at our roadsides is that the mouse population has exploded in ditches because of human garbage being toss out of windows. The raptors and owls are there because the mice are there, that is how they are injured in car and truck collisions. Over 90% percent of the owls Kay receives at the centre are from vehicle collisions. If an owl can be rehabilitated then she will release it back to the wild. If it can not be released, that is if it has had it's hearing effected, loss of too many talons or is totally blind, it will be used for breeding of more of it's species and it's off spring will be placed back to the locations of the parents. This is to insure it's DNA gene pool goes back to where the parents come from. Kay has over 80 owls at this moment, but people also bring her dead owls. 99 percent of these birds die from collisions with our cars. Our cars are missiles, I realized this quite a few years ago but had no idea the extent of how this trend would grow as now everyone over the age of 18 has to have their own car. We are killing species off at an alarming rate this way, everything from flying insects, birds, snakes, turtles, mammals and you know what you have seen dead on the side of the road or the blood splats on your cars windshield and grill.
Back to the Owl Foundation, it turned out that our little Barred Owl is too injured to ever be released and my not even live. However, the Ornithologist who examined the bird is hopeful that this Owl will come out of the 'critical' area of the rehab.
Kay told me an interesting story about the Great Grey Owls of Manitoba and I learned that the Great Grey Owl is the Provincial bird of Manitoba. She has one Great Grey Owl from the year that what she calls 'the year the Great Grey's left Manitoba'. Her bird which can not be released is called Big Bird.

Big Bird came from Warsaw in 2005 and suffered a collision with a vehicle. She is blind in one eye and partially blind in the other eye. She can not be released because of this . So she will be used for breeding if she can, so her off spring will be released back to Manitoba.
In the year 2003 the lemmings had peaked in Manitoba, so in 2004 their numbers were down and the owls had to scramble for food that winter and the owls were suffering from hunger. This is not unusual in itself as the numbers of lemmings and owls will peak and fall together as nature has allowed. The problem was with the spring of 2005 the floods caused all of the voles to drown in huge areas of Manitoba and the vole is the main food source for the owls during warm season months. The owls left Manitoba in search of food, some went to the south of the Great Lakes and some went over the top of Superior and down into the Province of Ontario. That year 4,000 Great Grey Owls were killed in vehicle collisions in Minnesota alone. Of the ones that we know of in Ontario, something in the number of 1,800 were killed in collisions between Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe another 500 were injured in collisions. Total those numbers up and you can see that we lost a huge amount of our Great Grey Owls that year. Big Bird came from Warsaw and was one of those owls.
Kay explained to me that Great Greys mate for life. They spend the courting, mating, nest building and right through to the brooding season together and after the chicks have fledged they will part until the next mating/courting season. When Kay receives an owl, the first year is spent treating it's injures, assessing the injures and treating the extreme depression that the owl is experiencing. That is the most difficult injury to treat, the depression.

Here is a photo of Audrey, Kay and Big Bird. Audrey has told me that Big Bird will ride on Kay's shoulder and if Kay is spending too much time on the phone with Audrey then Big Bird will squawk!!
After the first year, if the injures have healed, the depression is not so prevalent then the bird is assessed again. If a candidate to be released, retraining for hunting is started and it could be another 3 or 4 years before the bird can be released because of injuries and other factors. If not a candidate for release then retraining is started for life in a cage. Depending on injuries this can take on many formats. Usually in the 3rd or 4th year of life at the centre, the bird will be slowly introduced to 'links' in the cages. These cages are huge. Big Bird is the only bird not caged, she has allowed Kay to be her trusted friend. The hunting cage is 84' long and 10' wide with perches on each end to allow rehab birds to hunt and land at the other end safely.
 What I am trying to convey is that this is a long process, a costly process which involves the need of many mice, live and frozen, rabbits, medical attention, paid staff, an on duty Ornithologist and detailed record keeping that is used by Bird Studies Canada and Cornell University Ornithology. Donations are always accepted, you can send money, sponsor an Owl or just send money to The Owl Foundation.
 Owls are kept away from human contact and are monitored by video at all times to ensure their safety and keep them in the wild.

Here is the video monitor room where the owls are watched without human disturbance. This is so important for all of the owls to remain wild, whether they are released or not. Kay used to get owls from all over North America as she has the only facility that has developed proper methods (methods that she herself developed), to cope with injured owls and paid staff and a Ornithologist on staff to deal with the injured birds.
However, since 9/11 she can not get birds from south of the border anymore because of the restrictions placed at the border, it takes too long for clearance at the border and the owl would be dead by time the paperwork is done. Sad isn't it? She used to get birds from all over the US and Canada, but because of the Governments on both sides of the border this practice has not been allowed to continue. No one else has the facility, the experience or the expanded hands on learned experience of this woman. She is concerned about her Foundation as Kay is now 89 and is looking for a truly dedicated person to transition The Owl Foundation to the next generation. Dedication is the only word I can use to describe Kay McKeever.

Hawk as seen through the video monitor. Kay specializes in owls, but takes in other Raptors to her facility. Most have been injured by car/truck collisions at roadsides.