Study of the pair of barn swallows nesting on my porch. They like to sit on the lamp and the fire sprinkler and preen while they chitter at one another. They’re the first thing I hear every morning!
Images
Guess who’s going to draw birds for the Cornell lab of Ornithology for six months?? (hint: it’s me)
I am honored to be one of this years Bartels Scientific Illustration Interns! For more info about it, see the link here: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/page.aspx?pid=2237Following my dreams and doing what I love has actually gotten me somewhere I really want to be in life. Huh!
One flock in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mi (1.5 km) wide and 300 mi (500 km) long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess of 3.5 billion birds. That number, if accurate, would likely represent a large fraction of the entire population at the time.
(Fact Source) For more facts, follow Ultrafacts
Finished my summer art project just in time before getting too busy with vet school!
Featured are the birds that I’ve worked with at Wild Ontario, a program that uses non-releasable raptors (and formerly, a vulture) to educate people about wildlife and conservation. At the bottom is our motto. Clockwise from the top right:
Socrates: Turkey vulture, Cathartes aura, who was first admitted to my university’s veterinary college in 1987. Unable to be released back into the wild due to a permanent wing injury as a result of being hit by a car, he and his veterinarian founded the educational program three years later, teaching people about the impact we have on wildlife and their environment. In Socrates’ case, the lesson was that even throwing biodegradable items, such as apple cores, out of a car window during a drive can do lots of damage down the line. Roadside garbage attracts mice, raccoons, and other animals, who are often struck by cars. Their carcasses then attract other animals, including raptors and vultures, as was likely the case for Socrates. He also taught many audiences about the importance of vultures as scavengers. By feeding on carcasses, vultures keep ecosystems clean and healthy. They are immune to many species of bacteria found on decaying flesh, as well as their associated toxins. More importantly, they’re able to destroy many of these bacteria and toxins with their powerful digestive secretions, removing them from the environment.
Artemis: American kestrel, Falco sparverius – a human-imprinted bird, due to the unfortunately common tendency of people to snatch eggs or chicks of these species from their wild habitats, usually out of the ridiculous desire to own a “cute” raptor. Artemis sends a clear message to our audiences that human beings are in no way entitled to take wildlife from their homes in attempt to keep them as pets and toys. It is illegal to capture any native wildlife species in Ontario, and it’s also just unethical, as taking a young animal from the wild and having it raised by humans for too long robs its ability to ever live a normal, proper life in the wild ever again. Human-imprinted wildlife may be able to hunt and fend for themselves initially if released back into the wild, but often they will return to humans for food, which is potentially dangerous for the both the animal and the humans it ends up interacting with. Also, these animals will almost certainly not breed successfully in the wild. So, we tell Artemis’ story to teach the public that wildlife is best left alone, and appreciated from a distance. If she had never been taken, she would have been able to hunt a variety of prey, including dragonflies, locusts, frogs, lizards, snakes, mice, voles, and songbirds. Kestrels can fly horizontally at speeds of over 60 km/h when in pursuit of aerial prey, and dive at over 100 km/h. They are also capable of hovering.
Chinook: Peregrine falcon, Falco peregrinus, who crashed into a building or the ground during one of her early flights out of the nest. Peregrine falcons were removed from Canada’s threatened species list last December, after decades of captive breeding programs and other population recovery work. During the 1950s and ‘60s, the use of the pesticide DDT, caused many bird populations, including that of the peregrine falcons, to be nearly wiped out. DDT made its way up the food chains through the process of bioaccumulation, and it caused birds to lay eggs with calcium-deficient shells, which had very low hatchability, DDT was banned in the 1970s, and today, peregrine falcons can be spotted easily in many cities throughout Ontario, as they have adapted to using skyscrapers instead of cliffs as nesting sites, and are efficient at keeping local pigeon populations in check. They are not only the fastest birds, but the fastest animals that we have on our planet, with a record speed of 389 km/h during their stoop dives while hunting prey, which is almost exclusively birds.
Ellesmere: Gyrfalcon, Falco rusticolus, with a similar story as Socrates. She was also hit by a car and left with a permanent wing injury. While gyrfalcons will also dive after birds as large as Canadian geese in the wild, they will hunt terrestrial prey more often than peregrine falcons do. Common prey items include ptarmigan, rabbits and hares, and even Arctic fox. There are also reports of breeding pairs diving at polar bears who venture too close to their nests. Gyrfalcons are also the largest species of falcon in the world.
In between the birds are Ontario’s official flower and tree, the white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) and eastern white pine (Pinus strobus), respectively.
I’ve added each bird individually to my RedBubble store. Please take a look and see if there are any products you’d like! Alternatively, my art commissions are still open, and you can also consider donating to my ko-fi page.
Reference photos taken by my talented fellow trainers.
Happy International Vulture Awareness Day!
Here I am almost four years ago with Socrates, a non-releasable turkey vulture who was an educational ambassador animal for his species. He was the first bird I ever professionally worked with and learned to train, and together with the rest of his trainers, he helped educate thousands of people about the environmental significance of vultures. Socrates passed away a few years ago, but his legacy lives on as we continue to work to educate the public about native wildlife and their conservation. Please take some time to appreciate vultures today – either by going out for a drive and looking for one soaring in the sky (there are plenty still around in southern Ontario this time of year), or by telling a friend about how they keep our world clean!
On another note, this photo was taken at the start of my undergraduate degree. Now, I’m officially starting my degree as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Working with birds has shaped so much of who I am today in many different ways, and I’m glad I’ll get to continue to educate the public with raptors, and stay involved with my chicken welfare research laboratory. That being said though, veterinary school marks my return to 8AM to 4PM classes. I don’t know how much time I’ll have left over to maintain this blog, but I wanted to thank all of my followers for taking the time to read my posts, sending me the kindest messages, and supporting me all summer long. It’s also been fun to learn from other birdblrs and get to know some of you. I’ll try and update this blog about once a week, although I think it will mostly be reblogs instead of original posts. Until then, thank you all again for sticking around and being eager to learn about birds!
Not sure if being KING OF ALL YOU SURVEY counts as a human job, but this is my cockatiel Boggle in his new home in Canada. We just moved here from the UK (Organising that was… interesting!) and once I was done unpacking I had a lot of cardboard and I saw these flags on cocktail sticks at the dollar store… so now Boggle has his own castle to be King of!
My research assistant. Working hard or hardly working?
“Look, I’m not saying you have to use my edits, but if you want to make sure your reader fully understands your conclusions…”
today's bird 