Vagrant and Out-of-Season Birds

Unexpected Birds

Every fall we are privileged to have vagrant birds arrive here.  A vagrant is a bird that is beyond its normal range.  In other words, its presence here is accidental.  The Franklin's Gull shown below is one such species.  It appeared in a ploughed field in Ste-Marie-de-Kent last week and has remained for several days, associating with a large group of Ring-billed Gulls.

Franklin's Gull [Brian Stone Photo]

 The Franklin's Gull inhabits mainly the mid-continent of North America where it breeds.  It winters in fresh water marshes off the Pacific coast of South America.  It lives inland in North America because it likes ploughed fields and prairie land.  This trait earned it its common name,  'prairie dove'.

It is a medium-sized gull being 36-38 cm long (14"-15").  It is a black-hooded gull and has prominent white eye crescents and a slaty-gray back.  In winter the black hood is washed out with white and the bill changes from its prominent orange of the breeding plumage to black with an orange tip.

Franklin's Gull [L Nichols Photo]

The bird which arrived here is a 1st winter bird.  Note the dark gray-brown on its back.  Older gulls would be all gray on the back.

Ring-billed Gull and Franklin's Gull

Shown above is a Franklin's Gull with a Ring-billed Gull showing the difference in size.  This Franklin's Gull was seen at Scotch Lake several years ago in the fall.  Note it, too, is a 1st winter bird.

Overbird [Nelson Poirier Photo]

The bird shown above is an Ovenbird which has been coming to a feeder in Moncton.  This species is a common warbler species seen here in summer.  It is unusual because it is still here, appearing healthy and coming to a feeder.  It normally feeds on the ground usually in the forest.  It is not a feeder bird at all.  It is called an 'oven' bird because of the domed-shaped nest it builds on the ground with a side entrance.

The season for rare fall vagrants and out-of-season birds is still upon us.  Keep a close eye for anything unusual.

Animal Friends' Year-End Campaign

Dear Friend,

If you know Animal Friends, you know that spaying/neutering pets is at the heart of our organization. For more than 20 years, we’ve been compassionately and proactively fighting pet overpopulation. For far too long, too many pets have been unnecessarily euthanized in our region. At Animal Friends, we still firmly believe that euthanizing pets is never the solution to pet overpopulation.

To truly stem the tide of pet overpopulation, spay/neuter services need to be accessible and affordable to everyone – no matter their level of income. But that’s only part of combatting this crisis in our region. We need to ensure these services are accessible to the communities that need them most.

Our Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Program is making incredible strides in many of Pittsburgh’s underserved communities. Our staff has been hitting the ground, knocking on doors and getting to know the residents of these neighborhoods to better understand what they need and how we can help.

I’d like to share a story with you that was passed along by our Director of Clinic Services, Carol …

“Earlier this fall, we were visiting a neighborhood east of the city. We got wind that this neighborhood needed help caring for the area feral cats. They were reproducing at an alarming rate and some were even being hit on the road by cars. They didn’t know what to do, so they turned to Animal Friends.

When we visited the neighborhood we immediately saw what they meant – nearly two dozen filthy, starved cats and kittens roamed the street. It was overwhelming. And, it seemed that all of these felines were visiting one specific house – Miss Sylvia’s.

Miss Sylvia is an elderly widow, perhaps in her 80s. She lives alone and suffers from Alzheimer’s. She is a mother to children that have grown and moved away. And more recently, Miss Sylvia became a caregiver to more than two dozen cats.

To Miss Sylvia, these cats are so much more than just animals that need food and shelter.Several times a day, neighbors spot her padding onto her porch in her slippers to feed them.

There on her porch is where Miss Sylvia spends her waking hours. Through snowfalls and thunderstorms, she’s there cooing and talking with her animal friends. It’s clear these cats are the reason for her to get up in the morning.

And if that isn’t sweet enough, Miss Sylvia also selflessly shares the food from her own plate.Some days the cats get spaghetti and meatballs, other times, chicken. But never cat food,she couldn’t afford it.

We ventured to Miss Sylvia’s house. With pink plastic curlers in her hair, she answered the door. We tried to find out how much food she needed to care for the cats but she politely refused and humbly wouldn’t admit to feeding the cats. So we did what we could and left some cat food with her.

Not only did we need to get the colony’s population under control, we needed to help Miss Sylvia. So we started by successfully trapping the 20 cats from her yard who were then spayed/neutered and vaccinated at Animal Friends. After they recovered, they were returned to their home. To Miss Sylvia.

But it won’t stop there. She still needs our help. Miss Sylvia needs the proper tools and resources to better care for her beloved cats. So we’ll keep trying, and eventually, we’ll get her everything she needs.”

The Animal Friends’ staff left with a full vehicle – and even fuller hearts. It’s from hearing stories like these that make me so proud and so thankful for them. At Animal Friends, it’s this compassion that truly sets us apart.

Animal Friends commits nearly $1 million of our annual budget to keep spay/neuter affordable and accessible to low-income families – like Miss Sylvia. But we can’t fight the pet overpopulation crisis alone. To be a true resource to pet owners and communities, we need your help.

There is no better time than now to invest in spay/neuter. To keep our clinics running through the end of the year, we need to raise $250,000. Together, with you, we can make a difference in the lives of pets and people in our region. Together, we can end pet overpopulation.

Kind supporters, like you, are our reasons to be thankful this holiday season. 

Please respond with a donation today.

In appreciation,

David J. Swisher

President & Chief Executive Officer

AnimalFriends Resource Center

562 Camp Horne Road | Pittsburgh, PA 15237

412.847.7000 | ThinkingOutsideTheCage.org

Captain Paul Watson's Moral Compass Loses Its Way

Paul Watson standing in front of the renamed Sea Shepherd Vessel the Steve Irwin. It is ironic that Steve Irwin was not only a conservationist but a zoo owner and his daughter, Bindi Irwin, is now an ambassador for SeaWorld.

"Actually oceanariums are in many ways are victims of their own success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales, and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about these animals [...] Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead turned against the teacher. Paul Watson, 1995"

Many might be aware of the activities of the conservation organisation Sea Shepherd and its controversial founder Paul Watson. In recent years, Sea Shepherd seems to have lost its way and has drifted into the realms of animal-rights. Rather than just opposing the killing of whales and dolphins in whaling and drive fisheries, in such countries as Japan and the Faroe Isles, they have moved their sites to attacking the maintenance of whales and dolphins in captivity.

In a recent commentary on their website Paul Watson decries the death of a killer whale at the Marineland in Antibes, France. The whale called Valentin died some time after a serious flooding incident that seriously affected not only the marine park but also the surrounding area and involved the death of at least 19 people.

Watson berates the death and  - without any supporting evidence - makes the statement that it was the flooding that killed this animal due to the ingress of contaminated water into the killer whale exhibit. In actual fact, the post-mortem revealed that the animal died of a twisted gut (torsion) which veterinarians believe is unrelated to the flooding incident. The other whales in the same exhibit remain at the time of writing healthy and well.  He also blames Marineland for being built on a floodplain. Although, during its 45 years of existence this is the worst flooding experienced by this facility. Moreover, as stated, this didn't just affect the park but the large area surrounding it.

Watson finishes his polemic in a predictable way with the now familiar rhetoric and unrealistic aspiration that:

"Marineland must be shut down and the animals rehabilitated and released to the wild [...] These tanks must be emptied and these facilities shut down. Marineland, SeaWorld and other cetacean prisons around the world are a disgrace to humanity and an ongoing ordeal of suffering for hundreds of animals denied their rights to be free and to live a full and productive life..."

This is of course a totally unrealistic objective for many and various reasons. The first of which is that all the killer whales at Marineland (including the recently deceased Valentin) were all born in captivity and have never been in the wild – as is the case for the vast majority of the 50+ killer whales currently displayed around the world in zoological collections.

Further, as the well-known failed release of the wild caught killer whale Keiko demonstrated,  that even with wild caught animals such endeavours are highly risky and likely to not only be hugely costly but also inevitably not successful. It is interesting to note that this fact has also now been accepted by Jean-Michel Cousteau whose organisation Ocean Futures were directly involved in the Keiko experimental release. 

Interestingly, this hasn't always been Paul Watson's position regarding whales and dolphins is in captivity. In a commentary in the June edition of animal people magazine in 1995 entitled The Cult of Animal Celebrity his position was very different.

Watson makes the very good point that:

"Not all facilities holding marine animals are the enemy. And the huge sums raised to free a few individuals could be more positively directed toward ending the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of nameless whales, dolphins, and seals on the world's oceans"

He goes on to say something that many believe are truisms when it comes to the public's changed perception over the years regarding whales and dolphins.

"Actually oceanariums are in many ways are victims of their own success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales, and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about these animals before 20 years ago now cares a great deal. Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead turned against the teacher."

His final statement here is indeed very ironic because Watson is now engaging in the very behaviour he rightly criticises in this cited article.

In the closing passage of this article he makes a judgement that many feel is not without truth.

"There are hundreds of dolphins held in tanks around the world. There are millions whose numbers diminished daily in the world's largest human controlled killing tank of all: the ocean. If we don't hold the wanton killing in the wild, the only place dolphins will survive will be in captive facilities." 

So why has Watson apparently changed his mind completely regarding the captive care of whales and dolphins? Certainly, the situation for these animals in the wild has not really changed substantially. Animals are still being killed as is graphically shown in documentaries.  Watson's own efforts to highlight the drive fishery killings in Japan have failed to have little impact on the continuation of these hunts.

What seems to be happening is that Watson and others have decided that there might be a more lucrative return in targeting the small numbers of animals that are currently being caught in the Japanese drive fisheries for display in aquaria as this would generate better publicity and more public donations. The fact that these operations (which run in tandem within the drive hunt) have only been going on for decades compared with the hundreds of years history of the drive hunts seems unimportant.

This fact became very clear with the release of the 2009documentary The Cove. Whilst this film was very successful one criticism of its presentation was the overemphasis of the role of the live capture of dolphins in the drive hunt against the slaughter of the majority of the animals.  This of course comes as no surprise as the main protagonist featured in this documentary was the former dolphin trainer now animal-rights activist Ric O'Barry.

Whilst, there seems to be a considerable amount of common ground between the animal-rights lobby and the zoological communityregarding the use of drive fisheries for the acquisition of animals for captive display.  It should be noted that the USA and mainland European zoological collections now exclusively use self-sustaining captive breeding for the acquisition of display animals and not wild capture.  Unfortunately, opinions about the role that the captive display of whales and dolphins can positively provide in awareness to the protection and conservation of their wild counterparts seems to have been polarised. 

Sadly and ultimately the only ones that will suffer from this consequence will be wild dolphins, whales and the marine environment.  A situation recognised by Paul Watson in 1995 but seemingly now lost .

Further reading and links

Drive Hunts and Animals Acquired for Dolphinaria.

Cove Cultists?

Blackfish: Please Release Me Let Me Go

Art: Watercolour

Watercolour Workshops

The Storm

Recently I have had the good fortune to attend two watercolour workshops.  The most recent was presented by Peggy Holt of Fredericton.  Peggy put on a day filled with excellent instruction and demonstrations showing her work and skill.  She motivated us with her excellent teaching skills.  The session was complete with coverage of nearly every possible aspect of watercolour painting.  She even introduced some cutting edge ideas!  

The painting above was done from a photo which she used to have us paint a landscape.  I was intrigued by the severity of the storm and what it was doing to the landscape.  I enjoyed putting that on paper.

At the end of September I attended a 5-day watercolour workshop put on by the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour in Cornwallis, NS (see previous post).  This was a fantastic experience.  There were 8 teachers covering all aspects of watercolour painting.  Each was a master of her/his area.  We could choose to spend a day or more with our choice of 5 of them.  Some selected more than one day with some but I chose a day with 5 individuals.

Calgary Cityscape

One instructor was Rex Beanland from Calgary who specializes in cityscapes.  We had a fun day learning his techniques.  The painting above is what I was able to execute.  Getting the perspective right was the challenge.  

The symposium was also filled with extras.  We had a lobster banquet one evening.  On another we had a 2-hour presentation on Golden products.  We were shown dozens of their products with concrete examples of what they can do.  We finished the evening with lots of take-home samples.  Other extras included a life drawing session, night painting demonstration, and a welcoming reception.

I am not sure I am a watercolorist but I certainly enjoyed being shown what they can do.  Most of them are transparent and I love the luminosity they show.  It is also interesting to see what they can do by themselves as they move around on the paper.  They are a challenge to use but a rewarding challenge!

Thanksgiving Day Treats for your Dog

We’re always on the lookout for fun activities to share with you and we found a great one from our friends at the Outer Banks SPCA, located in North Carolina.(https://www.facebook.com/obxspca)

Last Thanksgiving, their shelter dogs celebrated by digging into these festive food bowls! Volunteers and kids had so much fun putting them together that the North Carolina agency has been serving up this Thanksgiving Day feast for two years and counting. Freezing the bowls allows advance preparation—and as a bonus, makes mealtime last longer for the animals.

 Share photos if you do this for your dogs on Thanksgiving!  We'd love to see!

Special thanks to ASPCA and the Outer Banks SPCA for this recipe.