Photos: Regina locals join nature group, save birds hurt in collisions
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Cities across Canada see about 30-million bird deaths due to window collisions every year — and Regina is no exception.
The tennis ball-sounding thud that can indicate a bird has come into contact with its own reflection is a common occurrence. In an effort to combat these incidents, Nature Regina created the Bird Safe Initiative. The program mobilizes volunteers to walk the downtown core in search of window collision victims, alive or dead, during spring and fall migration.
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Every day for seven days in each migration period, volunteers arrive downtown in the early morning hours, armed with nets or makeshift “bird ambulances.” Volunteers are comprised of local bird enthusiasts, members of the group Bird Friendly Regina (which works to protect Regina’s Bird Friendly City designation from Nature Canada), and members of Salthaven West Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Centre, who take in injured birds to treat and hopefully release.
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During these walks, volunteers typically find anywhere from zero to six birds a day in various conditions. In the past, groups have found up to 12 in a single spot.
The purpose of these walks is to collect data and log any bird strikes in a national database called The Global Bird Collision Mapper (GBCM). The volunteers also try to save injured birds, remove deceased birds and push for businesses and residential homeowners to make their windows bird friendly.
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When a volunteer finds a bird that has struck a window, where it goes depends on its condition. Injured birds are taken to Salthaven West where the clinic can provide medication like anti-inflammatories. If the bird survives, it is released near its capture site.
“Due to new research, no longer should we follow the ‘let it sit and it will eventually fly away’ rule – chances are it has a serious concussion and it might not get much farther than your neighbour’s yard before succumbing to its injuries,” Salthaven explained in a social media post last spring. “For the best chance of recovery, these birds require treatment at a licensed Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre.”
Deceased birds go to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, where curator of vertebrate zoology Ryan Fisher “gives them a new life” in public exhibits or they are stored and studied by the museum’s research departments. Any resident who happens to find a deceased bird in Regina can take it to the RSM.
The annual walks not only function to save window strike survivors, but also to inform communities about how they can protect against window collisions, which cause up to an estimated one-billion bird deaths in North America annually.
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