Entry #3, Guelph Lake Conservation Centre, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018
I know my boots aren’t warm enough for walking through the snow, but I keep going anyway. It’s only ankle deep, but I can already feel my toes going numb, my wool socks doing little to prevent it. I am volunteering with the Guelph Lake Conservation Centre through the Wildlife Club, cleaning bird boxes they have set up on the property. These boxes provide shelter to small birds who are preyed upon by hawks and cats, and allow them to raise their young in a protected environment. It also means that the debris needs to be cleaned out every few years, as the material can’t be cleaned out naturally.
We are in teams of seven people: two mappers, one recorder, one working the screwdriver, one person on the GPS, and two cleaners. I’m the recorder, so I have to take notes about the coordinates and condition of the box. The person with the screwdriver takes out a screw from the bird house and opens the panel on its hinge, revealing the birds’ hard work. Two or three nests, all stacked one on top of the next and tightly packed. One of the cleaners pulls out a chunk off the top, a perfect cube of woven twigs and feathers packed with dirt.
The sun is setting, so we clean the houses as fast as we can. Although the houses protect the young, it can’t always protect the adults who must venture out for food. Sometimes they are caught by a predator and their babies are left stranded, vulnerable, and unable to feed themselves. We see evidence of this when we open up the side of one of the houses and pull out a baby bird, preserved by the shelter provided by the birdhouse. Its feathers make it look like it could still be alive, but the exposed breast bone tells a different story. It seems to be almost fully grown, but obviously still too young to take care of itself.
We find another bird at the next box, this one younger than the first. After that, we find even more casualties, this time three bright blue bluebird’s eggs, which we identify by the feathers that line the nest. The deaths are not taken up wholly as tragedies, but as a learning experience. The birders identify the species of the dead birds and the eggs, and those interested in bugs examine the remnants of the species who fed on the animal after it had passed, as well as the spiders who have taken up residence in the boxes. By the time we have finished the second field of boxes, I can no longer feel my toes and the sun has almost completely set. I’m cold, but not as cold as I could be, which I remind myself while trying to ignore the pain in my toes. I’m glad when we head back to the car, but can’t wait to come back.
Photos provided by Cat Cooper