Wildlife speaker series

As part of the Wildlife Strategy, the City of Ottawa initiated a Wildlife Speaker Series to increase residents' knowledge and appreciation of wildlife, and promote coexistence through understanding and respect. Each event features one or more guest speakers on a seasonally relevant topic, as well as an open house-style environmental exposition. The expositions feature displays by local agencies and groups, and provide additional opportunities for residents to learn about Ottawa's wildlife and natural environment, as well as local environmental initiatives. All of these events are free of charge.

The series typically includes two events per year, held in spring and fall. Detailed information about each Wildlife Speaker Series event will be posted on the City's website approximately two to three weeks in advance of the event date. The events are also advertised through Councillors' newsletters, social media, and posters at City facilities. If you would like to be added to our mailing list for the Wildlife Speaker Series, in order to receive notifications about upcoming events, please contact us.

If you would like to provide feedback or recommendations regarding the series, or would like to suggest possible topics or speakers for future events, please email us to let us know!

Amy: We are streaming to you live tonight from the City of Ottawa, which is built on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation. We would like to honour the peoples and land of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation. Miigwech. We would also like to honour all First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, their Elders, their ancestors and their valuable past and present contributions to this land. We encourage all of you to do the same, wherever you’re listening from.

Tonight, we have invited Safe Wings Ottawa to talk about the reasons behind the City’s new bird-safe design guidelines and how residents can make their homes safer for birds. Willow English has studied birds in many places around the world and she’s currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Carleton University. I’m not sure if you’d say she was roosting, perching, nesting there currently. All sorts of puns could be made. We also have Anouk Hoedeman, who’s the founder and coordinator of Safe Wings Ottawa, with us. Willow and Anouk were both very helpful to City staff during the development of our guidelines, and they have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share with us tonight. So, I would like to, at this point, invite Willow to start screen sharing with us and take it away. Thank you.

Willow: Alright, there we go. Thank you very much Amy, for that introduction. So I’ll be talking today about just the basis of the problem of collisions, and I’m going to be explaining how we can solve the problem, all the methods that we have and what we can do as individuals and what Safe Wings has been doing. So first let’s start with the numbers. Now, one billion birds are thought to collide every year in North America alone, but to me, that number just really doesn’t seen meaningful because it’s so big. It’s only when I see birds spread out like this that have been killed by collisions, and this is at one of the Safe Wings yearly displays, back when we could have public displays. You know, that really hits home. And this problem is one of the biggest problems that faces birds. We have about 7,000 collisions per year at one of the worst buildings in Ottawa, and when you compare that to wind turbines, which many people think of as a problem for birds, they kill less than one million a year in all of North America. So it’s a really major problem that we need to address.

Willow: More specifically, in Ottawa, in 2020, Safe Wings volunteers and the public recorded over 4,701 collisions. And this is actually only a very small portion of the birds who collide in Ottawa. We don’t monitor every building in the city; I think you’d be a little worried if we were wandering around outside your house. And even those that we do monitor regularly, we think that we only find about 5% to 15% of victims, and we’ll go through the reasons for that later. The estimated total in Ottawa is at the very least 250,000 birds per year, which is huge. And it’s not just common birds that are colliding, we’ve documented 144 species, and I think many of you would probably be surprised to learn that Ottawa even has 144 species. But we’ve also had individuals of 14 Species at Risk.

So why do we have this problem? And the answer to this is based on our love affair with glass. Glass has become one of the cheapest and most desirable building materials recently, and we’ve seen changes in the design of buildings from, at the top of the picture, a single residential home, to condos or apartments on the right-hand side, to office buildings on the lower left. We’ve really increased the amount of glass in the environment.

Willow: As I mentioned, it’s not just common birds that are colliding. It’s a huge diversity of birds. I mentioned we had just over 4,700 birds collide last year in Ottawa, and a big group of that was the warblers. We had over a thousand warblers collide, and these are these small, insect-eating birds that tend to migrate further north and breed in the Boreal Forest. We also had over 500 native sparrows, and I say native because I’m differentiating from house sparrows, which are introduced. Chickadees, they’re here all year round, they know the area very well, but they still collide. We had almost 300 thrushes, which are birds like robins. Kinglets are birds— they’re very small, and they tend to travel around in large flocks. And we actually documented a collision event where we had over 60 of these birds hit a single building in a single day, because when you travel in a flock, you hit buildings in a flock. We had over 200 woodpeckers, 166 nuthatches, 38 raptors, including owls, so that’s basically birds of prey. We had 46 individuals of Species at Risk, so these are species with small numbers or declining populations. And we also had a number of birds that you might not expect to collide, such as the turkey, that you can see pictured here, as well as ducks, shorebirds and cuckoos.

Willow: So you may be wondering, okay, 250,000 dead birds a year, why don’t I ever see them? Well, there’s a number of reasons. We have a very effective group of scavengers here in Ottawa, from crows to foxes to coyotes to gulls. But birds also, when they hit, can fall in areas where you just don’t see them. They can be hidden in vegetation. It’s pretty easy to overlook a hummingbird in long grass. And they’re often moved aside or discarded. One major thing that I will be talking about later is that a lot of birds who don’t immediately die from a collision, fly away and die elsewhere, so they may not be seen near the building where they hit.

Now when birds collide, most of them do die immediately, or very soon after. But it’s a bit of a myth that most of them are dying from a broken neck; in fact, it’s head trauma. It’s basically like if you ran full speed at a brick wall and collided head-first, and birds are doing this a lot faster and they have very thin skulls. Now, those who don’t die immediately tend to have injuries such as head trauma, but also things like internal bleeding or vision loss, and these injuries may be too much for them to survive, either because of the injuries themselves, or because they prevent them from finding food or escaping from predators.

Willow: Why do birds matter? Well, I know I just feel that birds have an intrinsic value, and I like seeing them and hearing them, but they’re also extremely important to our environment. They’re responsible for things like pest control, and there’s actually been a number of studies done, where they’ve excluded birds from areas of timber and found that the timber quality decreases, so it’s a huge economic incentive to keep birds as well. A turkey vulture is one of the few animals, or any way, to remove botulism toxin from the environment. And hummingbirds are responsible for pollination. Birds like the waxwing in the upper right eat lots of berries containing seeds, and when they poop out the remains, they disperse those seeds across the landscape. Birds are also important as a source of food for other wildlife and also for people.

North America is also, unfortunately, losing its birds. A recent study by colleagues at Environment and Climate Change Canada found that North America has lost almost 3 billion birds, and these are adult breeding birds, since 1970. And collisions with glass is one of the leading causes. The leading cause is actually cats, or the leading cause related to humans is actually cats, but many birds that cats attack and kill are actually, have collided with a window first, and that’s why they’re on the ground.

Willow: So, in order to be able to stop collisions, we need to understand why birds collide. And there’s two main reasons. Glass is an invisible hazard for birds, so they don’t really understand it because it’s not there in the natural environment. Birds have a problem with transparent glass. Basically, when they can see through to the other side and they’re trying to get there, they will attempt to fly through it. But they’re also fooled by reflections. So a bird seeing a reflection of a tree in glass thinks that that tree is real and will attempt to fly towards it.

So let’s go through some examples of transparency that you might see from day to day. Glass walkways are almost always a problem for collisions, unless there’s been treatments done to prevent them. The top one here is at the National Gallery, and you can see how birds will obviously know that they can’t fly through those buildings, but if they’re trying to get to the other side, they think that they can go through that glass walkway to reach the trees. It doesn’t need to be a three-storey glass walkway, either. In the lower panel you can see just a single glass walkway that is also a problem for collisions.

Now, glass railing panels are something that every person who works with collisions absolutely hates. And, basically, these just have a lot more glass in the environment because they’re so popular these days, but a bird trying to fly to the other side, perhaps because you have a plant on your balcony, or in the lower case, or in the lower picture, because it’s in the middle of a marsh, they don’t understand that there’s glass there and will just collide.

Willow: Indoor vegetation is also an issue when birds can see through windows. In the lower picture, you can see that it would be very difficult for a bird to understand that some of the plants are on the outside there and some of them are on the inside of the glass. So having plants close to windows where birds can see them can be very dangerous.

Now this cause of collisions is maybe a bit more subtle, but it’s basically when you have a corner of a building or any other structure where there’s glass on both sides. And birds are trying to take a shortcut, and they can see through that corner to the other side, and they can collide. And this is seen more and more as we have glass, more glass in buildings.

Now these examples I’ve shown really aren’t all the examples of transparent glass in the landscape. We can find things like these stairway panels, as well as even something like a smoking shelter or a bus stop. So, any time you can see through glass to the other side it can be a potential hazard for birds.

Willow: So let’s move on to reflectivity here. And reflections are basically of the trees or sky, and birds see them as real, so they attempt to fly towards it. And it’s important to remember that all glass is reflective in certain conditions. Some glass is more reflective than others. You can have mirrored glass, which is usually worse than very transparent glass, but, you know, all glass can cause reflections and therefore collisions. If you look down at the bottom left, you can also see that sometimes glass can be both transparent and reflective at the same time. So you can see, down here on the bottom left you have a tree that’s being reflected, so that can cause collisions, but you also have a corner with glass on both sides, where a bird might try and fly through.

Now, we are going to be focusing mainly on glass, because that tends to be the material that has these properties most often, but it’s not the only material like this. So, polished metal, as you can see in these garage doors, can be a problem if it causes reflections, and as I’m sure you’ve seen, we’re getting more and more Plexiglas in the environment with COVID, as people are trying to separate from other people, and this can also cause collisions.

Willow: So I’ve mentioned both transparency and reflections as reasons why birds collide, but sometimes people just tell us, you know, it’s doing it on purpose, it’s not because it doesn’t know that it’s there. And this is often found in male birds early in the spring, when they’re very territorial, their hormones are raging, and they see a reflection of themselves and think that it’s another bird, a rival that they can try and fight, and get to move from the area. So this is actually a shorter-term problem because once the hormone levels start decreasing, they tend to start leaving their reflections alone, but you can easily stop this just by covering it. And you get this sometimes in mirrors that are unlikely to cause a collision, but something like a car wing mirror birds tend to attack early in the year for this reason.

So now let’s move on to what makes buildings lethal. Now I’m sure if I asked all of you, okay, which of these two buildings, Parliament or this building out in Kanata, which one is worse for birds, I’m sure most of you would know that it was the one on the right. But there are certain characteristics that make it especially so. So if we compare these buildings, we see a lot more glass and a lot more reflective glass, highly reflective glass, on the one on the right, we see more vegetation around it, as well as a water feature. And these are all characteristics that mean that there’s more likely to be collisions at the building on the right.

Willow: But first let’s dispel a myth about collisions. A lot of people have heard about collisions at these all-glass skyscrapers, and while these are a problem, they’re not the main problem. In fact, while there’s some uncertainty about these numbers because it’s just very hard to document, it is thought that low-rise buildings like the one on the left here are actually responsible for more than half of collisions and residences are responsible for almost the rest. And this is related to the fact that birds tend to collide quite low down on buildings, usually at the height or below of where there’s trees. And so at the top of a skyscraper where there’s not as much to reflect, you’re less likely to have collisions.

Now the first indicator of whether a building is going to be dangerous for birds is simply just the amount of glass. So you may recognize this building in the upper left by Dows Lake, and it’s got these huge wraparound windows as well as these glass railing panels. So this building, because of the amount of glass, is likely to be dangerous to birds. Similarly, we have the example in the lower left, where you have a lot of glass, and you can also see through to the other side. We can also compare the amount of glass and the amount of collisions in the two buildings on the right. We have many fewer collisions at the one that’s closer to the, whoever’s taking the picture, simply because there’s less glass there to reflect.

Willow: The environmental context is also important. If you took the house from the top and moved it to the area at the bottom where there’s very little in the way of trees or vegetation, you would have many less collisions than if it is where the picture shows it. Similarly, if you move the house from the bottom up to the context in the top, you would have more collisions. And it’s not that you need a forest surrounding a building in order for there to be collisions, because even a single tree can make a difference. You may also have more birds in an area than you would expect based on the amount of green space, because birds can be drawn to areas that you wouldn’t expect them in because of light pollution. And I’ll be going over light pollution in a bit more detail later.

Design traps are a really interesting feature that can be harmful for birds because you basically have an area that has glass on multiple sides, and vegetation lures a bird in and then it has trouble leaving, either because it’s surrounded by reflections on multiple sides, or because, like in the upper picture, there’s these parallel lines of walls on either side, and it funnels the birds towards a hazard. So, you can see at the, right here if you can see my cursor, this looks like a way for birds to leave this courtyard, but in fact that’s entirely glass. Similarly, in the picture at the bottom, we have an alcove where birds can see through to the other side. So any bird that reaches this area between these two wings of the building is likely to collide as it moves through and tries to reach the other side of the building.

Willow: Now bird attractants can also increase collisions. Basically, if you have more birds around, you’re also going to have more collisions around. And bird attractants can include things like bird feeders, natural food sources like berries or other fruiting trees, vegetation, and also water features, whether they’re a bird bath or something natural. So it’s important if you’re drawing birds into your yard that you make sure your yard is safe for them.

Now, of course I mention, I’m mainly talking about collisions, but because Ottawa bird‑friendly design guidelines touch on a few other things, I thought I would include some other potential dangers to birds that you should be aware of. Now the first is guywires, and these are used to hold up things like towers or antennae, and they can be very dangerous to birds simply because they’re hard to see and birds are moving very quickly. And I’ve unfortunately found several birds that have had a wing sheared off because they hit a guywire at such speed. So it’s best if we can avoid guywires through designs that don’t require them, but we can also work on making them more visible to birds.

Willow: Now, window wells are something that people may be aware of as a danger to animals like mammals or amphibians, because how would a bird get stuck in here if a bird can fly? But, a lot of birds, when they first leave the nest, aren’t very good at flying and we tend to get a lot of calls in the spring when we have fledglings, so young birds who can’t fly well, and they get stuck in these window wells. And this can be solved by either preventing the birds from getting into the window wells or having an easy way for them to get out.

Open pipes, flues and vents are also a problem, and this is because many of the birds in Ottawa are what’s known as cavity nesters, and cavity nesters are birds that nest in a natural hollow, usually in a tree. And in urban or suburban environments, there’s often not a lot of large trees that have holes in them for the birds to use, so they look at man‑made sources instead. Now, in contrast to a tree hollow, which is very rough on the inside, a pipe or a chimney is quite smooth, and so a bird may have trouble getting out of it, and that’s why it’s important that we cap these off to prevent them from getting in. And you may think okay, well that explains the chimney topper and the pipe there, but what about the gazebo? The gazebo actually reminds me of a story that I was told by a friend, and they had bought one of these, and there was a little hole at the top of each of the legs. And that hole was just big enough for a chickadee to look into. And chickadees are one of our cavity‑nesting birds. And they ended up lifting up the gazebo at the end of the year and were horrified to find a stack of dead chickadees in several of the legs. And this is because the chickadees went in to look and couldn’t get out. So it’s important where you have little holes into small tubes to make sure they’re blocked off to prevent birds from going in.

Willow: Mesh is often used to prevent birds from accessing things like balconies, as you can see on the lower left. But it’s also used to prevent birds from getting into things like berries, but it’s not the only reason it could be used. Something like a soccer net can have mesh in it. And these can all trap birds. This is especially the case if you have holes in them, where birds can kind of get in and then get, have trouble getting out, but it can also be because the mesh is not very taut. So we recommend that you don’t use mesh unless you absolutely have to, and if you do need to use it, then you keep it in good repair and check it regularly to make sure there’s nothing caught in it.

Willow: So, I mentioned before light pollution. And light pollution affects birds mainly because many birds migrate at night, especially some of our smaller species. So birds who are migrating at night navigate by the stars and the moon, and so when there’s bright lights from human sources they get very disoriented and it can cause them to behave in ways that are dangerous to their health. And there’s two main different types of light that can do this. So bright lights, really bright lights like a searchlight or like this picture, which is showing the 9/11 memorial, basically draw birds in like a moth to a flame. And birds who are trapped in these bright lights will just circle aimlessly until they collide or they simply fall with exhaustion. And at this tribute, they actually have observers who make sure when they get a certain number of birds trapped in the light that they’re turned off and it allows the birds to disperse. And you can actually see the birds in this picture, they’re all the little specks, so it actually is very striking how many birds, especially during the migratory period, that can get trapped in a single light in one area. But it’s not just bright lights that are the problem. City glow, which is basically the lights from everything from cars to stores to houses, can cause birds to go into areas where they might not normally go. And these birds aren’t necessarily colliding at night; they’re getting drawn to an area, and this is a big problem in downtown Ottawa, as well as other parts of Ottawa, but they get drawn into an area, and then in the morning they realize that this is not a great place for them and they try and leave only to collide, because there’s usually lots of glass in areas with lots of light pollution.

Willow: Now, what can we do about light pollution? Now, first it’s important to consider the fact that there’s been a number of studies finding that having more light or brighter lights doesn’t actually reduce crime or increase human safety. And part of the reason for that is if you’re standing in an area of very bright light, you’re unable to see in the dark around it. So you’re less able to see your surroundings. So, we need to keep in mind that we need to limit our light, and that we may not actually be getting the results that we’re trying to get with having more light. The colour of the light is also important. Birds and other wildlife tend to be less affected by warmer light, so that would be the left-hand side of this picture at the bottom, and more affected by the harsh, white lights on the right-hand side.

It’s also important that we design both indoor and outdoor lighting to minimize the spill. So you can see in these two light fixtures, the one on the left has light spillage both upwards and outwards, where the one on the right is focusing the light downwards, which is the only place we really need it. We can also control lights with motion sensors and timers to make sure that the lights are only on when we actually need them. And while, you know, we have a big city here in Ottawa with lots of lights, you may think, you know, my lights don’t really make a difference, but even just turning off a single porchlight at houses across the city could make a difference.

Willow: So let’s talk now about preventing collisions. How do we do this? Now the easiest way to prevent collisions at buildings is to prevent— is to make the buildings bird-safe to begin with. And the easiest way to do that is to have bird-safe design guidelines. Now these are basically rules that are given to architects or developers that tell them what they need to do to make sure that the new buildings that they’re building are safe for birds. Now we have this bird-safe design guideline in Ottawa now, which is great news. Unfortunately it’s not mandatory, and that’s something that we would love to see. So cities like Toronto do have mandatory bird‑friendly design guidelines, which means that all new buildings have to follow this and make themselves safer for birds. So that’s something we’d really like to see in the future for Ottawa. Now, in areas that don’t have bird-friendly design guidelines, they can also, people can also use guidelines that are a bit more general, such as the Canadian Standards Association guidelines, and these are all very similar, and they outline what characteristics buildings need to have to prevent collisions.

Willow: Now, bird-friendly architecture sometimes gets a bad rap. We’re not trying to say that everyone needs to live in a windowless box. These are all examples of bird-friendly architecture, and you can see that inside they would have lots of light. And they’re using things like bird-friendly glass, which I’ll speak about shortly, but also these slats on the upper left, or frosted glass on the lower right. Some of these you might recognize, the one on the upper right is from Ryerson, while other ones are from across the globe.

So in order to have bird-friendly buildings, we need to use bird-friendly building materials. And one of our biggest bird-friendly building materials is bird-friendly glass. And this is basically glass that has a pattern on it, and that pattern tells the bird that there’s something there. So you can see that there’s lots of examples of this, the upper right here you might recognize, it’s the Rosemount Library, that was recently renovated and this little reading nook was put in. And it’s hard to see in this picture, but the pattern on that glass is actually letters of the alphabet, which is very appropriate for a library. And we can also see examples here of these wavy lines and a mixture of both frosted and clear glass here on this door. Things like these bricks of glass can give enough texture to prevent collisions, but bird-friendly building materials are not limited to just types of glass but can also be things like these railings in the bottom left that don’t have any glass in them and actually help protect birds from the windows behind them.

Willow: Now, bird-friendly glass can come with lots of different patterns, and you can see some examples of patterns that are available on the right-hand side here. But, the patterns need to follow specific guidelines in order to be effective. And these can be divided into three main groups. So the first is the spacing of the pattern, and the spacing needs to be a maximum of about 5 centimetres between pattern objects and a minimum of 6 millimetres in diameter of the pattern, and all of this needs to be on the exterior surface of the glass. And that’s because if it’s on the interior surface, when the glass is reflecting, you can’t see the inside. It also needs to be in a high-contrast colour, so if you have a dark-tinted glass, having a black pattern isn’t very helpful.

Now why is density so important? Well, let’s look at a contrast between glass that’s designed to prevent people from colliding, which is the bottom here, with these four lines across, and glass that’s designed to prevent birds from colliding, which is the one on the right. Now when a person looks at the glass on the lower left, they’re going to see, okay there’s glass here, these lines indicate that there’s glass throughout this entire area. Whereas birds don’t understand that about glass. If they see something in one area of the glass, they will avoid it, but it doesn’t prevent them from colliding with other areas. And so we have to make sure that there’s very little spaces in between, because birds are used to trying to fly between obstacles like branches with very little space between them.

Willow: And I mentioned before, bird-friendly glass is not the only way to make buildings bird‑friendly, there’s lots of other examples of integrated features, such as the grilles, these slats on the upper left, things like metal screening and shades on the bottom. So these are just some of the examples of bird-friendly buildings that are not necessarily using bird-friendly glass. So it’s just one of the tools in our toolbox to make buildings safer for birds.

We do have a few examples in Ottawa, of course we’d always like to see more. But the University of Ottawa STEM complex is built following bird-friendly design guidelines, and they’ve used a combination of this opaque glass and patterned glass to make a very interesting and attractive design. So the reflections are eliminated because they have the patterns or the opaque glass, but it still allows natural light, it reduces glare on the inside, and like I mentioned it’s a very interesting and attractive building.

Place Bell is actually not a building that was built following bird-friendly design standards, but when it was renovated they made it bird‑friendly. And so what they did is they used patterned glass, you can’t really even tell that it’s patterned from a distance, but this is all patterned with lines. And they used frosted glass, as you can see in the lower left here. So this building is now bird‑friendly after this retrofit.

Willow: And as I mentioned, it’s a lot easier and more economic to make buildings bird‑friendly to start with, but there are methods that we can use to prevent collisions at any building that already exists, whether it’s a large office building or single-family house. And let’s go over these now, and I’ll focus more on what you can do at your house, but a lot of these can be used at a larger scale on larger buildings.

So if you have collisions, there’s a few things that you can do very quickly that aren’t super effective but will help. The first is that if you have a bird feeder or bird bath, you need to make sure it’s very close to your window, less than one metre is ideal. And this may seem counterintuitive, but normally when birds collide when they’re at a feeder, it’s because they get startled off the feeder. And if the feeder is very close to the window, they won’t be moving very quickly when they collide, and so they’re less likely to be hurt. If the feeder is further away, they’ll be moving at full speed when they collide and are more likely to be killed or injured. Moving indoor plants away from windows is important, because a bird may see through that window and try to get to that plant, and this is especially true if you have large amounts of plants that would attract a bird. You can also close curtains or blinds, but as with having glass patterns on the inside, if there’s reflections causing the collisions, this won’t help. So it only helps if the problem is that the bird can see through to the other side of the house.

Willow: The most important thing is to have visual markers in the glass to make the birds aware that it’s there. And one of our favourites at Safe Wings is a product called Feather Friendly. And for the do-it-yourself version, it comes basically like a roll of scotch tape, and you apply it, and then you peel it off, and it leaves these dots behind. And what’s important to look at here is that the dots are widely spaced but they actually only cover up about 4% to 5% of the total window, so you still get lots of light.

Window films are another effective solution. And these can be patterned like the ones on the upper side of this slide, or they can be solid, as in the bottom left. Now the bottom left looks like it’s solid and it’s just blocking off the window, but the middle picture shows what it looks like from the inside, and it shows I think a pool for a bird feeder there, showing that it’s important that this window be treated, but it still allows light while preventing collisions and also increasing your privacy.

Screens are great at preventing collisions, but only if they’re on the outside of the window. Paracord is also a very sort of surprisingly effective solution. The picture on the right here shows a window that just has one bit of plastic or aluminum at the top, and then lines of paracord at the proper spacing that are hanging down and are attached at the bottom, and this will also prevent collisions, and is something that you can make for yourself and is very inexpensive.

Willow: But we’re really not limited as long as we follow the instructions about things being on the outside of the glass, about being high-contrast colour and having appropriate density. You can get creative, and if you’re trying to do something just to test it out, you can use these liquid chalk markers to make a really, really gorgeous pattern like here. And if you want something a bit more long term, you can use these oil-based paint markers to do something like the window on the left, which has a screen on the outside in the middle section, and then these really great patterns with the oil-based paint marker on either side.

And as I mentioned, while these are— I was focusing mainly on ways to do this at home, these same methods can be expanded to large projects as well. So, in the upper left you can see a building that’s been retrofitted with bird-friendly glass in Ottawa, and on the right you can see the paracord on a bigger building, still hanging down and attached at the top and bottom, preventing collisions. This film on the bottom right is the same as the white one that was seen on that single pane of glass, and it allows you to see through and for light to get through from one side, but not the other. And on the bottom left you may recognize this glass walkway is the one that I mentioned previously from the National Gallery. And this has actually been retrofitted with the dots, and because it is a large structure and a bit higher off the ground than most people’s home windows, you need a little bit of extra equipment, but it can still be done. If you are getting new windows, bird-friendly glass is definitely one of the best solutions, it’s relatively inexpensive compared to, you know, it’s not that much more expensive than just normal glass. And it’s an attractive way to make sure you have a long-term solution.

Willow: Now what’s really important if we’re trying to prevent collisions at existing buildings is to listen to the science. Because, although we’re still learning about collisions, we do know how to prevent them. And when guidelines aren’t followed, we get buildings that are supposed to be bird‑friendly and aren’t. And unfortunately there’s a prime example of that in Ottawa, and this is the National Arts Centre. And this building’s major renovation was designed by an architect from Toronto, and as I mentioned before Toronto has mandatory bird‑friendly design guidelines, so all the architects from Toronto should know how to make a building bird‑friendly. And you can see the pattern here has spacing that is too wide to prevent collisions. Any smaller bird would think that they could fly between those markers, and so they won’t be effective. They’re also on the inside of the glass, so you can’t really see them from the outside, and they’re in a low-contrast colour, it’s, they’re kind of a beigey colour, although it’s hard to see in this picture. And since this building was renovated and supposedly bird‑friendly, we’ve had 46 collisions in just 2020, including a Species at Risk, and because we don’t think we find most of the birds who collide, even at buildings we monitor, the true number hitting this supposedly bird‑friendly building is more like 300 to 450.

Willow: So I thought it was also important to show a bit what doesn’t work. And this includes these decals, which unfortunately are still widely sold as solutions to bird collisions. And the reason they don’t work is because they don’t have the density needed to prevent collisions. So a bird won’t collide with this corner here because there’s something here, but this decal in the corner won’t keep the bird from colliding in this area. Birds also don’t recognize a static shape like this as a bird of prey or as a threat, so they don’t keep— a bird of prey outline doesn’t keep birds away. So you can use these as an effective solution, but only if you put a ton of them up, and that would block your view and let in less light, so we don’t recommend these.

Another thing that doesn’t work and has had some very mixed results in testing is UV collision deterrents. And the theory here is that because some birds can see in the UV spectrum, if we put in UV-reflective material in the glass, the birds should be able to see it and we don’t. And that sounds great, but it doesn’t really live up to the hype. So one of the reasons is that a lot of birds actually don’t see in the UV spectrum, so those birds aren’t prevented from colliding. The other issue is that a lot of collisions, perhaps the majority, occur in the very early morning. And as other people who sunburn easily might know that there’s very little UV light in the morning; that’s when I tend to come out in the sun in the summer. So there’s very little UV light around to reflect and to show birds that there’s something there. So this is why Safe Wings does not recommend these products.

Willow: So let’s talk now, if we know the solutions, about putting them in action. So I’m going to share a bit about what Safe Wings does, and then I’m going to follow that up with about what you can do as an individual.

So one of the main things that Safe Wings does is building monitoring. And this is basically volunteers going around buildings during the migratory season as well as sometimes the rest of the year, and looking for dead and injured birds. When we find them, we record when and where the bird was found, as well as the species, we collect the dead birds and we bring the injured ones to a rehabber so they can hopefully be helped. And this is really important for identifying problem buildings and being able to demonstrate to building owners that there’s a problem. We also work with the government, the City of Ottawa, we work with extensively, as I mentioned before. We’ve helped with the guidelines, the bird-friendly design guidelines so that hopefully new buildings in Ottawa will be safer for birds. We also work with the National Capital Commission. You might recognize the structure in the upper right here, which is a visitor’s centre at Gatineau Park, and this is actually being retrofitted with dots on it to prevent collisions. We also are uniquely situated to be able to work with the federal government, and we’ve been working with organizations, with departments like Environment and Climate Change Canada, as well as others, to make sure that the buildings that the government uses are bird‑friendly, as well as requiring that in other buildings. So that’s an ongoing project.

Willow: Safe Wings does a lot of outreach and education. We were one of the main contributors to the Ottawa Bird Strategy, which is a document that basically identifies the main threats facing birds in Ottawa, and also identifies solutions that we can work towards to prevent these problems. We do a lot of outreach with property owners and managers, often at the buildings that we monitor, and we are able to show them that there’s a problem and suggest solutions. We talk to architects and builders about how to make sure that new buildings are safe for birds. We have quite a lot of social media activity, we highly urge everyone to follow us on social media if you have it. And this is where we help to educate the public as well as share things like events like this one. We do our annual bird display, or at least we normally do, when people can meet, and we’re looking at ways to do that safely this year as well. And we’ve led things like a Jane’s Walk, showing buildings that are dangerous and buildings that are safe for birds in the downtown area. We also do lots of outreach with school and community groups, so we’re basically trying to raise awareness about both the problem and the solutions. You may know about our Safe Wings hotline. This is a number that people can call if they have questions or if they have an injured or dead bird. So we can provide information about preventing collisions or what people can do if they find an injured bird. We can also often give assistance. Although we are entirely volunteer-run, so it really depends on if we have enough people available. In the upper right here we have two of us here. You don’t actually see the bird in this picture, but we did capture a Canada goose on the parkway with a broken wing. We’ve worked with some really great arborists who have helped with birds who are stuck in trees, usually with entanglements, or helped reunite birds with their parents after they’ve fallen out of the nest.

Willow: We also have two volunteers that run— that are licensed rehabilitators and run short‑term care rehab facilities out of their houses. As you might expect, we are window collision specialists, and this is because window collision victims do require some specialized care, so it’s similar to having a concussion in a human, and one of the main things that we can offer them is oxygen-enriched areas, and this helps them to basically get the oxygen that they need while they’re recovering, and we can also just give them a supportive environment where they have adequate food and they’re protected from predators and scavengers. And we work with the Wild Bird Care Centre in Ottawa as well as other facilities when we have patients that need longer-term care. And you can see from the pictures here that we get everything from a mourning warbler on the lower left to a pileated woodpecker and chimney swift, and so we get a huge diversity of birds coming through, and we have a really high success rate in helping them out.

Alright, so that’s what Safe Wings is doing to help birds. But what about people as individuals, what can they do? Now the most important thing perhaps is to treat your windows or your railings. We offer, Feather Friendly as I mentioned before is a great product, we offer that for sale as do many other retailers, such as Wild Birds Unlimited, and you can also buy it online. So this is a really effective way. You can also use homemade methods like the paracord on the left there, and our website has a lot of information about how to do this effectively.

Willow: You may not be in a situation where you can make changes to your building, whether it be your home or your office, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t help birds. It’s really important to know if there’s a problem, so monitoring for collisions, whether at your home or your work or your school, is really important, and can be a really good excuse to go for a short walk every once in a while. Any collisions you find can be reported on our website, so we have an awareness of what buildings may be a problem. And you can also talk to your building manager or condo board or other management if you do discover that there is a problem. And Safe Wings can help both with information and background if you’re speaking to building management, as well as supplies and information about monitoring buildings.

Sharing your knowledge is really important. I am just amazed now, now that people I know tend to be aware that I work with collisions, everyone has a story about a collision, and lots of people want to know how they can prevent them. So talk to your neighbours, talk to your friends, family, let them know that there are solutions and send them to our website, you know, we can make sure to spread the word amongst everyone so that people know that there’s solutions. You can also advocate for bird-friendly building design, this is really important, and we need more widespread support for this, talking to elected officials as well as when we have these community consultations, when there’s new developments, attending those and asking, what are you doing here to protect birds? That’s really important. If you have friends who are architects or builders, share what you’ve learned tonight, direct them to Safe Wings’s website. We need to make sure that everyone who is making new buildings is aware of this problem. One of the ways, if you’re not really sure on how to start this, or where to start with this, is following us on social media. We often have featured posts about how you can help speak up for birds such as signing a petition to update Ontario’s Building Code, or in the lower picture we had people make comments on the US government website when they were talking about lowering protections for birds.

Willow: Rescuing live birds is also super important. If you do find a live bird that’s injured, don’t hesitate. Because birds are scavenged very quickly, or they may manage to fly away just enough so you can’t find them again. You can gently pick up a bird and put it in a box or a bag and then give us a call for further instruction. If it’s something bigger, you can use a towel or a blanket to throw over it and put it in a bigger box, but it’s important no matter what the bird, that you don’t handle it more than you need to. And this is really important because people tend to like peeking into the box or taking a picture, but stress can actually kill birds. So once it’s in a box, give us a call and make sure you leave it somewhere quiet and warm and dark. And don’t be afraid of birds as well, a lot of people are afraid of birds, but unless you happen to find an injured eagle or great blue heron, they really can’t hurt you.

Willow: And this, if you take nothing else home from this presentation, I hope you remember this. We get this so often. Someone who has found a bird that has collided, they put it in its box, and we’re giving them instructions on, to bring it to a rehabber, and they say, well, you know, it seems fine now, can I just let it go? And the answer is a resounding no. Because birds that have major injuries can still fly sometimes, and some injuries take a long time to show up. And I’ll give you two examples. The bird on the lower left there is a brown creeper, which is a tiny little bird at about 10 grams, and they actually, some of them overwinter in Ottawa, which is amazing. But we, one of our rehabbers had a brown creeper, and it seemed fine the day after the collision, except for it seemed a bit puffy. And she looked more closely at it and found that it was actually inflating a bit like a balloon. And this is because it had punctured an air sac, which is sort of a bird equivalent of a lung, when it collided. And every breath it took let a little bit more air under its skin. So this bird actually had to be deflated multiple times by our rehabber, and if it had been released after it collided, it would have definitely died. The other example is this pine grosbeak on the lower right here, and this is a bird who collided and seemed lively and okay, shortly after, and then the next day showed this blood in the eye. So if this bird had been released after it collided, it would be out there trying to survive blind in one eye. So this is why we tell people birds who collide always need to get to a rehabber if possible.

Willow: Now that— collecting injured birds is important, but so is collecting a dead bird. And this is because finding these dead birds and knowing where they came from is really important for us to be able to determine which buildings are a problem and to be able to demonstrate to building management that there is a problem. So if you do find a dead bird, retrieve it immediately. Again, there’s so many scavengers, it’s amazing how fast things can come and grab a dead or injured bird. And put it in a bag, give us a call, sometimes you may not be able to take it with you, in which case try hiding it and let us know where it is, or, you know, at the very least, take a picture, because that’s better than nothing. It is always better for us to have the actual specimen, sometimes when you’re trying to I.D. a bird it’s very helpful to have more than a picture, to actually have the bird. But it still, it does help. And it is low risk, just like handling live birds, just make sure you wash your hands after.

Now these are things that you can do on your own, but, being part of a collective is always going to be more effective. And so we’re always looking for more volunteers at Safe Wings, whether it’s something like a driver or a rescuer when we have injured birds, or a building monitor. And you don’t need to dedicate a huge amount of time, you can dedicate as much or as little time as you want, even it’s just going for a walk every day, or a couple days a week, and looking at a nearby building to see if there’s any birds there. Once people know a bit more about collisions, you can do— participate in events like this, doing outreach. But a lot of people sometimes have skills that they may not recognize as helpful to an organization like Safe Wings. So we really encourage people to get on our website and fill out our volunteer form. We are also an entirely donation-based non-profit organization, so if you’re able to donate, that helps us as well.

Willow: So Safe Wings Ottawa is helping to make Ottawa a safer place for birds. We hope that you’ll join us in this, and save our number, look on our website, and find out how you can support Safe Wings and support birds in Ottawa. And I’d like to thank everyone for coming out tonight, I know a lot of us are pretty Zoom’d out, so having another hour-long Zoom in the evening may not be the most inviting thing, but it’s great that so many people are interested in this problem and now aware of the solutions. So, we welcome questions, both myself and Anouk, and yeah, I’ll pass it back to City of Ottawa staff.

Amy: Thank you so much there Willow, that was great. And at this time, we would like to invite people to use that Reactions function at the bottom of the Zoom window, you can use that to express your appreciation certainly, or you can also use it to raise your hand, that is an option under the Reactions tab, and we will be taking questions at this point for Willow and Anouk. And so just raise your hand and one of our staff will unmute you and let you know when it’s your turn to ask a question. And I’m seeing lots of virtual applause and thumbs up, so thank you very much. That’s great to see, it was an excellent presentation. Oh, we have a hand up. And remember that, again, Willow is bilingual if you want to ask your question in French or English, we can accommodate.

City staffer: Great, so Pam, you’re unmuted.

Pam: Hi, I was just wondering, the new public library that they have planned down in LeBreton Flats looks like it has tons of glass and lots of plants, and has that been designed as bird‑friendly?

Willow: So, that’s a complicated answer. And I might say a couple words and then pass this one to Anouk, because she’s been more involved with the library than I have. They say it will be bird‑friendly and there’s plans to use bird-friendly glass, but there are aspects of it that still concern us at Safe Wings. So maybe Anouk can expand on that.

Anouk: Yeah, so one of our concerns is that light pollution, as far as we know, hasn’t been addressed. And we know designs are changing and stuff, and we have seen some improvements from the earlier ones. But we expect light pollution to be a problem there, unless, you know, there’s shades installed or some kind of system to reduce the light overnight, but because it’s a public space that would be used at night, we’re concerned that it will be lit up quite brightly at night. The other thing is that in general it just has areas with a lot of glass, especially on the upper floors, so even with bird-friendly glass it could still be a bit of an issue. I mean it’s better to have bird-safe glass but, you know, usually the best place to start with making a building bird‑friendly is to just reduce the amount of glass that’s unnecessary. So, you know, we’re hoping that it will be bird safe, it will certainly be better than the National Arts Centre, I’m pretty confident about that.

Pam: Okay, thank you.

Amy: That’s not necessarily a high bar, given what we’ve just heard. But I will say that, you know, from the very beginning we have shared the— Ottawa’s guidelines in draft form with the library design team and we’ve continued to keep them updated and apprised of the progress of the guidelines right up to their approval by city council last November. So they are aware fully aware of the guidelines and they have engaged with Safe Wings to try to improve on that design.

Willow: I did also have a question in chat, direct chat to me, asking whether clean windows are worse than dirty ones. In general, yes, anything that makes a window more transparent or makes reflections look more real will increase collisions. However, while having a dirty window may lower collisions, it’s not going to be as effective as one of the solutions we outlined.

City staffer: Okay, so I’m going to, sorry, unmute Hiro.

Hiro: Hi, thank you very much for the presentation, it was fantastic, I really appreciate it, I especially appreciated that you’ve given me an excuse not to wash my windows. But I wanted to ask about the— this presentation, will it be recorded, because I’m part of a community here that would be very interested in this, sorry, I see it is recorded, will it be made available to participants so that we can share it with others who might be interested in this?

Amy: The recording will be posted on the City’s YouTube channel. I can’t give you an exact time, because we do need to make sure that we get captions produced to make it fully accessible for people, so that can sometimes take time. But yes, it will be made available via the City’s YouTube channel, along with the previous two wildlife speakers series events that we’ve had.

Willow: And when that happens we’ll make sure to announce it on Safe Wings social media, so if you follow us, we’ll try and keep everyone up to date with that.

Amy: I’m not seeing any other hands up. You covered all of the issues so well.

Willow: Well, I will say that if anyone has questions specific about, you know, their own home, or how to best treat their own windows, please feel free to reach out to Safe Wings and we can often help with that. Similarly, if you know of an area that has lots of collisions and you want to approach the building management, we can help with that. So definitely feel free to get in touch, questions, concerns like that, so.

Amy: Okay, I’m seeing one person suggesting that the question function is not working for them, so that’s unfortunate. Again, you know, folks have managed to type questions directly to Willow as the presenter or to, you know, you can also type it to one of the City of Ottawa staff. We have seen some folks able to use the Reactions tab at the bottom of the screen. So, if you just hover over the bottom, you know, the bottom part of your Zoom window then you should be able to see the Reactions tab down there. Oh, there’s a question, someone’s got their hand up.

City staffer: Erin, you should be good.

Erin: Hi there, thank you. I’ll ask a quick question. So I guess what I’m wondering is, if I want to do a do-it-myself project and get some of these stickers for my windows, you know, with a two-storey house, it’ll be tricky for me to apply them on my own to the second-storey windows. Is it, like if all I can do is my first-storey windows is that, you know, better than nothing, or, just wanted to get your thoughts on that?

Willow: Certainly, treating any window is better than nothing. And people often have an idea of which buildings, or sorry, which windows in a building are the worst, so you may have noticed collisions at one or two and not at others, so those would certainly be the priority ones. Having— we tend to hear about collisions less on the second storey, simply because there’s often less there to reflect, so it sort of depends on what’s around. You can still have collisions on a second storey, all the way up, you know, to fourth or fifth storey, but definitely, starting with known problem windows is the best, and if you do have collisions on your upper windows, looking into a way to get up there would be maybe something to do later on. I don’t know, Anouk, do you have anything to add?

Anouk: Yeah, I’d like to add that I actually did most of the second windows on our house, second-floor windows. It required a ladder, an extension ladder, and good balance and some patience, but I was able to do it. And I have heard of other people who’ve been able to treat windows from the inside of the house. So if you have, say, casement windows that flip down, you know, for, so you can clean the outsides of them, some people have those or, I mean, I guess those are, sorry, double-hung windows. Casement windows sometimes you can reach out to be able to do it. Somebody, I think Ted Chesky from Nature Canada actually did a video of him putting Feather Friendly on his own windows from the inside of the house. So it’s possible, and the other thing is to hire somebody who can do it for you. We’ve been trying to put together a list of people, you know, handyperson‑type people who might be able to take on that stuff. We haven’t found people specifically to do that, but if you ask around, you know, window washers might be another option, who would be willing to go up there and do that sort of thing.

Amy: I’ll just add that I’ve recently been getting quotes myself to have Feather Friendly installed here at the house. We’re only looking at doing some of the larger windows on the first floor, but I did discuss the possibility of doing upper-storey windows. There are contractors who are able to do that here in Ottawa. The people that I contacted were both 3M dealers locally, so they are out there if you look up, you know, Feather Friendly and look for local dealers, and you can probably find someone to give you a quote.

Anouk: If I can also just add, what I also did on a couple of the windows on the second floor that I couldn’t reach as easily, I made those paracord systems to hang in front of those, and I was able to attach those much more easily with industrial-strength Velcro to the outside of the window. So that’s— it requires a lot less time to install it, so it’s a lot easier.

Willow: Yeah, and we’re working on getting that list of installers on our website. I also do have a couple questions in my chat, so I might go ahead and answer those. Someone asking what defines a Species at Risk, and what are some of the ones we’ve seen in Ottawa. So a Species at Risk is a designation either from the provincial or the federal government, and they look at things like how many of that species is estimated to be in Canada, whether it’s a small population, and whether it’s been declining rapidly. And so these species have extra protection under the law. So most of the species in Ottawa are protected under various laws, but the Species at Risk Act gives extra protection to birds that are designated as Species at Risk. We’ve had, I don’t know if I can offhand name all 14—

Amy: You’ve had chimney swift, we saw that in the presentation, and that one’s a Species at Risk.

Willow: Chimney swift, barn swallow, olive-sided flycatcher, evening grosbeak—

Anouk: Peregrine falcon, wood thrush, Canada warbler, golden-winged warbler, eastern wood pewee, what else are we missing?

Amy: Common night hawk.

Willow: Oh yeah, whip-poor-will.

Anouk: Yup. Common night hawk, thank you Amy.

Willow: Yeah, yeah. So lots of those. And then the second one, second question we have, will the NAC do anything to retrofit their windows to prevent collisions? Anouk, I’ll let you take this one as you’ve been dealing with them.

Anouk: Sorry, can you repeat that again?

Willow: Will the NAC do anything to retrofit their windows?

Anouk: I hope they will. We’ve been working on that. They haven’t done anything yet, which is unfortunate. I, we already have a bird this year that collided there that we know of. We’ve been trying to convince them, because there are different options they could use, but, you know, it’s a good lesson, that you have to do it right in the first place to make sure your building is bird‑friendly. And it’s a lot easier to do it when you’re planning the building rather than to try to retrofit after the fact, you know, just, maintenance-wise, and also budget-wise. So, you know, please everybody do encourage them to take action.

Willow: One thing I’ll add to that as well is that we’ve actually had— we’ve found that them not following the guidelines and not doing it effectively has caused pushback with other developers, who say, well they spent all this money to make it bird‑friendly and it doesn’t even work. And so why should we do that? And we try and explain that they didn’t follow the guidelines and so we wouldn’t expect what they did to work, but we definitely have heard from other developers, you know, that they don’t want to try because this one didn’t work.

Anouk: We do encourage anybody who’s planning to build something to be bird‑safe to run it by us, because we’re happy to look at plans and to give our feedback on how effective we think it’s going to be.

Willow: Yeah, there’s no— you don’t want to waste a whole bunch of money on a solution that we could have told you from the beginning isn’t going to work, so, that is, that is definitely— and all of this, we’re happy to provide advice for free.

Amy: Thank you, I think it’s Ishmael’s turn, he’s been waiting patiently.

City staffer: Yes.

Anouk: Oh, he’s still on mute, though.

Ishmael: If I wanted to buy one of the DIY projects, where could I buy them?

Willow: So–

Anouk: I’ll take it. You can contact Safe Wings. You can find our contact information at safewings.ca, or you can go online to Feather Friendly, it’s, I think it’s featherfriendly.com, and they have information there on ordering it online.

Ishmael: Thanks.

City staffer: So we just have a question here. “Great presentation, thank you, can we have an idea of costs of installing the feather option and then when we clean our windows, does it peel away or damage the dots?”

Willow: Yeah, so, you know, cost is always going to feature in people’s decisions. For a roll of Feather Friendly, it’s about $20. We do also sell them as three-packs if you’re doing larger areas, which are a bit cheaper per roll, and that does an area about the size of a sliding glass door, so like a double-glass door. So, it doesn’t, they actually last quite a long time, there’s buildings that have had this applied for over 10 years in Toronto, and they’re still looking good. And if by chance you do have one of the dots that falls off, I just keep the ends of the rolls that I have, and you can replace them. So, yeah, it’s— for doing it yourself, it’s not too expensive and there are other options like with the oil paint marker or the paracord that are certainly much cheaper. Installing this at a commercial level, so on bigger buildings, tends to be much more costly, but that tends to be because of the labour, and often if they need a lift to get up to higher areas.

Anouk: I just want to clarify, a single roll of Feather Friendly will do 16 square feet, and that’s actually equivalent to a single patio door, or a standard, you know, like your front door if it were all glass. Just to clarify.

City staffer: Thank you, we have another question. “If you use the ink to draw on the outside of the windows, will it remain after cleaning the windows?”

Anouk: If you’re using an oil-based paint marker or any kind of oil-based paint, it will be— I mean you’d be able to scrape it off, but it won’t come off easily. If you use something like a chalk marker or Tempera paint, then it will come off more easily. It will probably wear off with the weather and you’d be able to wash it off more easily.

Willow: I had a comment here just about, you know, important to remember your house but also your cottage, a lot of people have cottages, they tend to be in areas with more vegetation, maybe some more birds, so this is also something to consider for your cottage as well. I’m sure screens are very valuable in a lot of those places, so, having an exterior screen is a great way to make a cabin bird‑friendly and to prevent bugs.

Anouk: And just think of, you know, because we know the problem with scavenging with birds that collide, or getting preyed on, often people don’t realize how many birds are dying at the cottage when they’re not there. And I remember talking to somebody who said that, oh yeah, every spring they would open up the cottage and they would find that the big picture window was broken because a grouse would have gone through it. And you think, well, if that happens every year, do something about it. But I mean the only reason they knew about the collisions is because a grouse is a big enough bird that it can break a window.

Amy: Thank you very much. Those were some great questions and some, you know, very helpful responses. If we don’t have any more questions, then I think we will give another round of applause, whether that’s, you know, in person or virtual, feel free either way. Thank you very, very much to Willow and to Anouk for being with us tonight and providing this excellent presentation. And we’ve really appreciated it, and I look forward to getting it up on the YouTube channel and seeing how many more views we can get up there. We had close to 100 people here tonight, watching live, which is excellent numbers, and, you know, certainly a topic that hits close to home for many of us and especially over the past year, I think people have been noticing the issue more when they’ve been working from home, if they weren’t before. You know, I know that I personally did hear at least one bird hitting my window when I was working here in my home this past year, and it did inspire me to, you know, put some actions behind the city’s guidelines that I was involved with bringing forward, and make sure that they actually get applied here at home as well. Thank you very much, everyone.

Anouk: Thank you, everyone.

Amy: Have a good evening.

Good evening everyone.

Welcome to this fifteenth session of the city's Wildlife Speaker series.

I am very pleased to see many of you made it out here tonight despite the weather forecast very impressive thank you.

My name is Amy McPherson and I work in the city's natural systems and rural affairs unit here at city hall.

[Speaking french]

Tonight's presentation is being broadcast live on YouTube and we would like to welcome all those who may be listening at home.

For those of us in the room little bit of housekeeping please note that if there is any kind of an emergency.

We have 3 exits in this room.

The one where you came in.

And then there's also 2 doors at the front of the room with the bright red exit signs there.

Also in this room you may notice, we have flags representing the peoples of our Algonquin and Anishanabe host host nation.

We recognize here at the city of Ottawa that is built on the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation.

The people of the Algonquin and Anishanabe nation have lived on this territory for millennia and their culture and presence has nurtured and continue to nurture the city.

We would like to honor the peoples and lands of the Algonquin Anishanabe nation and we would also like to honor all First Nations and Metis people their elders our ancestors and their valuable past and present contributions to this land.

The goal of the speakers is to highlight the co-existence with wildlife by increasing residents understanding of the animals that we share our city with our wild neighbors.

Mutual respect is a key part of co existence particularly where predators and those large animals are concerned.

There's an old saying about good fences making good neighbors.

And in some cases with wildlife that's literally true if you're trying to protect your garden or your livestock.

In other cases it simply means that we need to respect each other's boundaries and personal space.

And for coyotes at this time of year personal space is particularly important.

Our speaker tonight Dr. Stan Gehrt from the Ohio State University will explain what that is in his presentation.

Dr Gehrt was actually our very first speaker in this series back in 2014.

He and his team has been studying coyote populations in Chicago.

In and around the city of Chicago for 20 years now.

It's an extraordinary program of research which has produced incredible insights into how our coyotes have adapted to living in and among our cities and urban suburban and rural settings and we're very pleased to have him here back in Ottawa.

To share his findings he'll address some common misconceptions and help us all understand how to reduce the risk of conflicts with coyotes.

So I'd like you please welcome Dr. Stan Gehrt.

[Applause]

[Dr Stan Gehrt:]

Thanks for having me.

Good evening everyone can hear me okay?

And hopefully the YouTubers can hear this this is a new experience for me as well don't know if I like being live on YouTube.

I'm lucky to be here because I had an issue last last night coming through your customs, I got delayed I got sent to the back room for a couple hours.

It turns out that when I was explaining to them why am coming into our country the person did not think, he did not understand why there would be someone studying coyotes in cities he had never heard of such a thing.

He definitely didn't understand why someone would go to different cities and talk about this stuff.

He also didn't understand why the city of Ottawa would have any interest in having me come and speak about this subject area, so he didn't believe that part and then the final part he didn't believes that even thank time I will be giving a presentation to the general public and he said who would want to hear your give any kind of topic.

So I had no chance at all.

I was a could send him a picture.

So then I did notice he didn't believe anything I told and he did he's told me over and over again he says I don't think you're being forthright and they're being truthful and I did start to think well out there something about me - I may give off this very shady kind of character or something which is kind of disappointing because you like to think of yourself as being very honest looking person and maybe I have the wrong view of myself.

I was thinking about this last night and I thought that will only be talking about a pretty controversial animal, a lightning rod for people's emotions always deal with us every time I talk about this animal there's always some people that really love them a lot of people really don't love them.

I'm gonna be talking about them and just to get this out there I will do everything I'd talk about will be the truth. As far as I know.

I'll be sharing with you results from my research.

And as Amy mentioned I've been very fortunate to be the PI of a long term project is very rare to for any animal and to be able to study them continuously for 2 decades and have that kind of support and we have had that kind of support it's been pretty amazing and I will be sharing with you what the things that we've learned.

Everything I talk about is totally supported by years of data.

In some cases it's more years in other cases it's less if it's a new subject area.

I promise you that that's what I'll be talking about if there's something we don't know I will say we don't know that.

Even from giving up the shady appearance at least the information on the sides as was trustworthy.

What I'm gonna do is start off I need to talk a little bit about the animal itself.

I'm going to test this to see if it works.

Good.

We'll talk a little bit about the coyote just a couple characteristics so that we're on the same page.

Every time now I have to give a talk there's always this question about what kind of coyote do we have here.

Definitely up here in the northeast there's a lot of talk about in articles in shows about coywolves or a different kind of coyote that you might have seen.

I have to talk about that first because some of you will be saying well you study coyotes in Chicago what does that have to do with these huge humongous scary animals we have up here.

I'll touch the ultimate first once we understand we're talking about the same animal then I will share with you some things we learned about them in Chicago.

A lot of that will start off with the ecological stuff.

The idea here is the if you understand more about how the animal functions and works, then you can actually understand why certain actions and responses are more effective than others when we talk about the last part which is the actual confilcts we will get the conflicts.

And those often that's why people are here this one coyotes and well how do you get rid of him.

How do I protect my dog.

The we have to go through this other stuff before we can get to that, so you just have to bare with me, but we will get to that.

The coyote is a uniquely north American species it's not found in other parts of the world.

Prior to European colonization that was basically the ancestral range of of coyotes.

They were western species especially a wide open space kind of species, but then in the last 50 to 60 years they've expanded the range to take over most of North America and in fact I haven't updated that slide I've been showing that same side for almost 20 years now and I've cut off parts of Canada there.

In fact I cut of part of my own study area over Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia and Newfoundland definitely have coyotes.

They're found everywhere from the Arctic Circle down.

In fact, in the most recent years they are expanding the range even further.

You think well how can that be, there's not much left, but they just crossed the Panama Canal.

Now there's a whole new kind of environment just waiting for coyotes to come in.

And that'll be an interesting story down south.

That huge expanse of in that range expansion during those decades took place also during the decades where especially in the US we had the greatest amount of predator control and removal taking place.

And more coyotes are killed in any other mamillian predator even though the the targets wolves and mountain lions and bears, more coyotes were killed but unlike those larger kind of animals that were actually exterminated from most of the west, coyotes increased in number.

It's an important lesson there and even today we're still talking about coyotes and that's a current picture.

Over in the US we have a federal agency USDA Wildlife services in charge or is charged with the responsibility of controlling predators for livestock predation.

So they kill about 80,000 coyotes or a little bit more each year that's reported and is probably more that aren't for one reason or another.

In addition to the the the governmental agency that we have, the actual fur harvesting and hunting takes place in most states.

It's year round hunting you can you can kill coyotes any day of the year.

You can you can kills many as you want.

There's for game animal they are the least protected animal in the states.

And of course if your bounties and things like that.

If we just look it pelts that are turned in and you're looking at a little over 300,000 annually but that's not including all the animals that are not turned in terms of pelts it's an underestimate.

These numbers don't include all of the the nuisance kills inadvertent kills and other things and there's thousands of those as well.

Then finally if you combine all those together and you put in a few other finagle factors most people agree that somewhere between 500,000 to 800,000 coytoes are killed every year in North America.

They handle that just fine.

That's no problem for coyotes.

They don't need that kind of, any kind of protection.

That's what's going on in fact I'm not responsible for this estimate I haven't verified it I haven't done the math but it does seem about right that roughly a half a million killed it's about one every minute throughout the year.

That's the kind of pressure that they're experiencing from us on a regular basis and they've been experiencing out for many many decades.

What we've done is we created in an animal that was already well adapted for that kind of persecution even before European colonists came here but we've made it even made them better and they're really good at it.

And it also primed them to be able to exploit new novel environments like cities.

So that's a picture of one of our our urban animals mousing and they're really good at variety of different things but hunting and chasing rodents is actually one of the best things that they do.

That does make up most of their diet across the range including in city's.

But it's a good example I want to show you one of our animals mousing.

This is gonna be just outside of what we call Medieval Times.

That's a restaurant that's a castle and if you've ever heard of Medieval Times but this is the medieval times coyote.

She is mousing across from the parking lot.

I'll start it I want you to know this is an in the middle of winter and when I start this video she's looking for rodents well she's listening for them look at the snow.

The snow's completely undisturbed and then this is what she does.

She can't see anything.

When they're in the mood and when the food is good when it's a good year, that's a vole, that's their favorite rodent, they can take about one vole every 15 minutes or sometimes markets around a wood pile.

That's an urban coyote but they still have those skills they're really good what they do.

They're also the perfect size for having a very broad niche.

If they were smaller say about a fox size they would have to live off of rodents exclusively which is what they're capable of doing many of them do that.

If they were bigger than a coyote, they put wolf size now they have to kill big things and they can't live off of small things for any length of time.

But because of the perfect size energetically, they can live off of a wide range of prey items and they do.

Voles are their favorites.

This is an alpha pair of animals or in our study area in Chicago.

They killed that doe.

The doe is perfectly healthy the 2 of them together took her down and I'm not you those pictures because it's never pretty when canids kill, but they're capable of doing that and this is again and in the Chicago area.

They're doing it to a certain extent here in the northeast as well.

They're nich is even bigger than deer though.

These are actually pictures of another project that I conducted in Cape Breton island in Nova Scotia.

This is a few years ago and we're just starting to publish some papers from that.

That's where there is a series of major conflicts between coyotes and people there.

We did study and we realize we found on Cape Breton island in the island in the national park the primary food item was moose.

That's a picture of me in the winter there with a moose leg.

And that moose that they killed that winter and it's a 900 pound animal.

Usually it's only 2 or 3 of them that's doing it.

They're not packing up like wolves but it's usually about the pair.

They use certain tricks to do it.

I don't have time to go into that.

That's actually a moose that was stuck in the snow they become vulnerable to coyotes that way.

And gray seals never been documented for but they were the attacking gray seals that's a 400 pound seal.

Basically there's a certain technique that they use I'm not going to go into it it's not pretty but it's just an example of how adaptable they are in terms of exploiting new novel food sources such as what what we might see a note in the city.

In a few years ago it was actually a Canadian production company.

That filmed this a documentary and I was in it actually.

They came to Chicago and then I also we're in Nova Scotia for a little bit.

I didn't know, well the title I was originally told was going to be was not that.

After the fact a suit picked up on it with some of the questions but anyway.

This is the documentary that came out.

It really kind of started this process of introducing this term "coy wolves" into the literature and it's been a frustration for us scientists ever since.

The deal about this is that as coyotes expanded the range to the east, they either went south of the Great Lakes or went north of the Great Lakes.

At some point when they went north of the Great Lakes there was an ancestral interbreeding that took place and what came out of the back end was primarily coyotes with a tiny bit of of Algonquin wolf gene.

I don't know I don't mean to be disrespectful but your Algonquin wolves are not very big.

They are on the tiny side.

Even though it's a wolve gene it's a tiny wolf.

Everyone takes a bit makes a big deal out of this first of all that little the the percentage that's wolf is very small and of that, it's a small wolf.

People need to get you know kind of move past full sized thing because it's exaggerated.

That's we call them eastern coyotes.

It turns out that now that there's been some recent genetic work what they found is a basically all coyotes east of the Mississippi all the way down to the southeast of the US have a small amount of wolf DNA and varying degrees of dog DNA.

Your coyotes have a small amount of dogs DNA as well.

The point is is that the coyotes they may have a little bit of this a little bit about but there are all coyotes.

Even our Chicago coyotes.

Our Chicago coyotes are the same size as yours.

How big is it? We're talking about average size is somewhere between for females low thirties, males maybe around mid thirties.

Pounds sorry 14 kilograms something like that 13 or 14 kilograms.

They can get up to the mid forties the largest one I've ever pounds sorry, the largest one I've ever handled was in Chicago was 49 pounds and that was a giant animal.

I had to stand on a chair to weigh him because I couldn't get him off the ground.

The tiniest coyote I've ever for its age the tiniest coyotes I've handled, I've trapped myself and handled, came from that study in Nova Scotia.

Those are supposed to be the big bad eastern kind and it was so small.

The Parks Canada biologist refused to take a picture of me with that.

The point is there's just a lot of size ranges even within a population you can have a big coyotes you can have a little coyotes.

No one ever calls me and tells me "I saw the tiniest coyotes I've ever seen".

Real quick if you wanna see what it looks like it's the Mississippi River that section of the division here.

Coyotes to the east of the Mississippi River are the ones that have varying degrees of a small percentage of wolf or dog or both.

Including our Chicago animals.

In terms of size you won't be able to see this very well, you don't really need to.

These are actually average weights of coyotes taken from different parts of the continent including Canada and I just have them structured by region and you don't have to see the individual ones, just note that it is true that the northeast does have on average, heavier larger coyotes and then they get much smaller when you go to the southwest that's true.

It's mixed up in its there's a lot of overlap between the midwestern kind it's again does that are east of the Mississippi and your northeast.

In fact my Chicago animals are not in there yet.

I'll put them in right now.

They're on the left hand side there in the following on right along pretty nicely with your northeastern coyotes.

They're about the same size.

We're talking about the same animal, but ecologically they may function differently depending on what's available to them.

They can be doing different things but it's still basically the same animal.

As they expanded the range then moved down that and filled up every gap on the eastern part of North America and now they're filling in the last remaining gap and that would be the urban cities.

This is a relatively new phenomenon for parts of of North America.

From the central part to the eastern part it's not that new in the southwest.

That's what we're focusing on.

This is Chicago and I'm not going to go through all these but as Amy mentioned we've been conducting this research for the last 20 years and we're addressing a wide range of different questions and we have been for quite awhile.

Some are older some are newer and you won't be able see these but population dynamics, their space use, their parasite or disease dynamics, their diet is a really important component I'll talk about that in a second and their social structure we'll talk about that because that's actually related to some of the conflicts that you have especially this time of year.

The ecological role - how do they affect other species.

Then the population genetics and finally the newest thing that we're focusing on now what's hopefully I'll have a little bit of time at that and to get to it we'll see 5 time it's been a real syndromes and whey I say behavioral syndromes I'm talking about personalities.

We're trying to measure personalities of individual coyotes.

The ideas is that the personality is actually genetically determined type of behavior and the idea or the question is do cities tend to select for a certain kind of personality and over time you start to see more of the of a certain kind of personality than another? That's what we're trying to do right now.

These questions are kind of the basic ones and we want to know how to coyotes live in the cities? How do they do that? And what does that mean for us when they do? What's the risk for people and pets and then the the co existence versus conflict how much of it's about is actually taking place?

If we have time, another part that we've been focusing on quite a bit it's not just the risk that they pose for us but also what benefits to the pose.

No one really talks about that and part of it is that it's a sad fact that for many mammilian predators, the funding that's available to do work on them is driven by conflict.

It's very it's very hard to get funding to look at the ecological role that a predator.

It's a little better for the charismatic species like the loans to lesser extent wolves but for something like a coyote it's not that charismatic it's hard to get funding to look at the ecological role or the potential services are provided.

But we have been doing that.

My funding agencies allowed me to diverge a little bit here there and over the years we've chipped away at it and maybe I'll be able to maybe touch on a little bit tonight if you let me.

How do we do our work?

We live trap the animals we used to stand the same kind of techniques that the fur trappers use.

The same kind of traps.

They are modified to reduce any potential injuries to the animals.

We take them to the lab and we measure of a variety of things.

This is an animal in a trap about to be processed.

We we take them out of the the area that's a thing that you have to do in urban settings because it can't process an animal out in in basically an open lab.

Up there we take them in, we measure them, weigh them.

That's my team and I'm about to get a fecal sample.

You'll notice that I'm at the proper end of the animal.

There's certain advantages to being in charge and that's one of them.

That's an animal getting measured and we look at the teeth.

The teeth tells a lot about the animal we can look at their health but also their age and and how well they're doing.

Another animal getting processed.

That one 's about to be released I would put a radio collar on them.

The radio collars basically open up a window into their life so that we can follow them but we can also document their survival in the mortality as well.

We tracked in a variety of different ways but old standbys still the one that we spend most of our time doing which is that's a VHF collar.

There's a team of people the track these animals day and night every week of the year.

We know a lot about how these animals move and now we also use GPS collar.

So satellites are tracking a subset of the animals.

Those in those collars are expensive in the data or expensive taking late though you will repent those we put those on animals that are downtown.

There is one I was jealous my team caught a beautiful male this morning and he is in a prime spot, right on the edge of the north and northwest side of Chicago.

Anyway that's the name of the get the GPS collars.

And then in addition to marking the adults, and we also go into the dens.

Coyotes are seasonal breeders and they only produce a single letter and it's always in the spring and late April and throughout most of May.

We're going into the dens once for each litter and micro chipping the the pups.

We do that for a variety of reasons.

One is to look at the reproductive rate of the population because coyotes scale their reproduction based off of resources as well as their own population densities.

We also are curious about the social structure and mating system I'll talk more about that and second.

That looks like a really nice scenic natural setting for them to raise a litter.

If we turn the camera to the side, then that's what we see and they're actually raising letters within just a few meters of of people.

This is actually the most challenging thing for coyotes to do in an urban area is to raise a litter.

It's when they’re the most vulnerable.

Coyotes are never tied to a single point in space if they're healthy.

They don't use dens themselves unless they are hurt.

This is the one time and this is when they are most vulnerable.

It's also where you also tend to get a lot of conflicts too.

We'll talk about that a little bit later.

Here's just a few examples of pups just because a really cute.

This is just outside of O'Hare.

It's an industrial setting with those cement things.

That litter was horrible to try to get to.

We were literally calling through the concrete after these pups.

They always have their litters at the mid to late April.

Usually April is the prime months to some more urban pups and we we do a lot of things with them as well this is your typical 4 week old pup their eyes have been turned yellow yet and they haven't really devote their not expressing personalities are easy to handle.

At 5 weeks that's a 5 week old are beginning to look more like a coyote in their eyes are beginning to change this is another 5 week old.

Personalities are starting to be expressed by these guys within the letter you start to see some some bold and some side individuals and then that's a 6 week old pup and now it will look like a coyote.

At that age then they're going to be taken out of the den or they will themselves enough they'll begin following the parents about at that point and they will come back to the den after that that's it's 6 week window where they're really venerable and once they get to that stage I can't wait to get away from there.

Where are the parents? they're around they're definitely around and it just depends on which parents

you're talking about so some of them are more bold and so they will be standing there barking and pacing what we're what we're doing that most of the parents though, they're there just circling around but you don't see them.

but they are there you can hear them on the receiver on we can hear them because they're out there, we know that they're watching us but we can't see them.

They don't ever come after us no.

A good question.

In addition to all that I'm not gonna have time to really swing into this with the other little thing that we do, that you may or may not see everyone's on a program this these pop up every now and then we have collaborated with National Geographic.

And they send an engineer when you're to develop the special critter can put under the neck that tracks their face.

So where they are looking then they can we can see what they're saying what they're doing and.

This is what we're looking at.

This is a camera it's hanging down just below the chin of a female as she's walking.

It kind of allowed us to see certain parts of the coyote's life that you wouldn't be able to see and it's actually been kind of interesting and you know I won't be able to show you much of this but you will see these every once a while.

We have the National Geographic stamp on there.

We basically are able to

Again, we recorded those and then we send another National Geographic and they pick and choose what they want to use.

You'll see her snout coming down from above.

I will fast forward those for just a second.

But can do this.

Sorry I won't be able to do that but anyway, you get the the feeling here in terms of what we're able to do.

One of the cool things about this and we I'm not going to wait to get the service but we can separate scavenging from predation.

In this case in this video clip she'll eventually come across a bird and if you're using scat analysis for stomach content analysis to look at diet, bird would show up there and you would think you think because he killed a bird but they don't they're actually scavenging.

In this case is she finds a dead bird and then she procededs, this little songbird, she takes about 30 minutes to eat 1 leg.

She has to take every further off the bird.

We were laughing.

We're watching this is like ours is the serious? Is she really gonna pluck every feather off?

When it comes to birds they're really picky.

Now you'll notice that on that rodent, that vole, they don't care.

The whole thing goes down, but beacause it's a bird, they have to take every little thing off.

We're learning in a kind of useless things like that too.

This is where we're at.

We actually the animal that we caught this morning, I believe that was number 1290.

We're almost at the third of the 1300 coyotes that we captured and marked so far.

A large portion of those are the pups from this litter, but we've also captured a lot of the adults.

It's a massive study.

Then there are a couple couple dogs and a couple of people unfortunately.

That's just working in urban areas.

Real quick, some details.

Even though you often see coyotes alone they are a packed animal.

They do live together in groups it's just that they don't spend a lot of time together.

The howling that you hear is actually really important in terms of maintaining the social cohesion of an animal that often is not able to see each other.

It's the territorial defense is probably the most important aspect of them then living together in groups they rarely come together as a group.

They are territorial.

This is an example of what we do.

Those red dots and those yellow dots, are the locations of an alpha male.

He's the dominant male of a group living and in a park on the northwest side of Chicago.

In the yellow locations are daytime and the red are night time and that that doesn't really matter.

I just want to see that just looking at it even from a distance it's really easy to see the delineation of their territory.

I mean they basically draw out for us.

That's how I guess faithful they are to their sites.

They patrol those edges.

Those that just happened to correspond with roads and it turns out in urban areas in particular, they use the roads to find those boundaries.

They also do the same thing on the country, although, in some cases it might be a road or also might be a fence line or it could be a stream or creek.

They're using features of the landscape took took mark and maintain their boundaries.

In this case roads are not a barrier for them at all physically, that male he could easily cross those roads, he could easily across them anytime of the day.

There's another reason why he doesn't.

For the most part is because of other coyotes.

Those red dots up there are his locations.

Then if we look to the south those yellow dots are the locations of an alpha individual of the neighboring pack.

Then if we move over to the east, then those blue dots are the locations of an alpha animal over to the east, and they're all using the same roads for those boundaries.

It's also the social boundary that's keeping them from crossing the road.

It's not the difficulty of crossing on the road.

That's one part of the of the population.

That's the groups and that's the territorialism and they basically behave a lot like us.

You can't see it because we're up to high, but those are subdivisions are are communities that are adjacent or even within those territories.

In each one of those communities you have a house and have a yard.

Then those are all marked by property lines to varying degrees.

They're just doing the same things we do is just bigger.

Those are the territorial boundaries like I said they do it for us.

The another example this is within a large park.

They have increased in size.

The population in abundance.

How they do that often give up parts their territory to their adult offspring.

There's only one breeding pair in a group.

That's the the parents.

The other members of the group or their offspring and as they become sexually mature, then they have to leave.

These dots represent the mother and the son of the pack early in our study and at that time there were clearly together and they were sharing that territory.

The father was there as well.

Then after a year or so, another pack took over part of their territory and he became sexually mature.

He took over little tiny part of the original territory, his mom took over the the the northern part.

They separated and then eventually he basically lived, to became an alpha male, he lived in that area it's about 1 square kilometers for over a decade.

He had a single mate and they produce a variety of different litters and eventually his offspring became alphas in different parts of that same park.

Today, we actually have seven packs.

Of the 7 packs 5 of them are from his offspring.

The adults.

Each one of those colors represents another pack.

Originally the park was one single pack.

Now again we have 7.

This is another picture of the most recent grouping so, again even when they're really packed together like this, even when the densities are super high they still maintain their territorialism.

Even when the neighbors are their relatives they still maintain their territorialism.

It's a very strong feature of the behavior.

Not each dot.

The dots represent the location of that animal.

The color represents an animal.

That color represents 3 to 5 individuals, that's their territory.

If you're looking at 7 colors are you looking at 35 minimum coyotes and that's not counting pups.

There's actually 60 to 70 coyotes in there.

Real quick, howling is one of the ways that maintain these territories as well as marking.

They spend a lot of time doing that marking and I won't go into all the details about how, but we've actually done a lot of research on that.

Not all coyotes howl at the same rate and other howling bouts actually kind of, they sounds chaotic, but they're actually pretty ordered.

There's certain types of communication that are transferring, but I'm not gonna go into that.

This time of year is actually really important to them.

This is a big month for coyotes.

Here's a alpha pair, they are actually tied.

They're just like dogs.

I don't know if you've had the good fortune or misfortune depending on how you look at having a dog mate, well they get tied together and that's what's happening here.

The do have another thing in common with us, in addition to the territorialism they become romantic at the same time that we do.

It turns out that this part of North America their mating area peaks right around February 14.

And I told you, I'm only telling you facts.

I'm not making things up.

It's not just a bad joke.

That's actually the truth.

But their hormone levels begin increasing in preparing for this event weeks in advance.

They actually start for the males, will start in December.

Testosterone levels will start to build up and they'll start producing sperm in January in preparation for the female coming into estrus.

Female, her hormone levels are sifting altering quite a bit.

She's only going to become, like a dog, only come into estrous for a few days.

And that's it, that's it for the mating.

At other times of the year after the done, hormone levels drop and they can't mate even if they're in the mood.

This is it.

It's a really important time.

This is one reason why they're extremely territorial and you may have a an increase in some conflicts.

A characteristic of the dog family is that they are behaviourally monogamous.

Monogamy is not common in the mammilian world.

Most mammals are not monogamous at all.

They want to try may with as many partners as possible.

The Canaanites, the wolves, the coyotes and the foxes are behaviorally monogamous.

It turns out that when, just like with birds which also be heavily monogamous, once geneticists started testing one they find all kinds of cheating going on.

Actually the monogamy becomes even more rare once the geneticists get into it.

No one had looked at coyotes.

They looked at foxes and they looked at wolves and ensuring there are plenty of cheating that goes on with those.

Foxes as are the worst.

If you want to look at it that way.

The highest levels of cheating goes on with especially red foxes.

They're just crazy.

I just showed you maps of our animals and that's just one example across Chicago.

We're seeing these territories just packed right next to each other and we also solitary animals that are floating through.

There's all kinds of opportunities to cheat.

I mean if they want to have multiple partners they don't have to go very far.

We expected to find, just like every other study has found for monogamous species, to find cheating going on and we thought that this is a perfect test.

That's not what we found.

It's the largest genetic studies been done for coyotes and in fact for canines in general.

There's an alpha pair we happen to catch them together.

It is quite common touch to catch a pair at the same time because they don't want to leave each other.

One of them gets caught the other one stays and often gets caught as well or they're there when we when we show up.

They can actually ride in the same cage together because they're so tight.

what we found, we genotyped almost 900 animals.

It's a really huge sample.

Over 300 have been genotyped.

and of those three-hundred pups, it makes up almost 70 litters.

That was over a year ago.

We're even above that now.

This would be about an 18 year period.

What we found was that of all of that, we found no evidence of any kind of cheating, no what we call extra pair parentage at all.

None.

We also found that the longest mate pair was over a decade long.

In fact, we never documented a divorce.

We still haven't documented divorce.

There's no voluntary separation of an alpha pair.

Only when one of them dies will one take on another mate.

What does that mean to me? It's a pretty fascinating thing, and this is not a major objective of our research, it is not what we're getting funded, I have to be careful about how much time you spend on this but just think about the vast majority of the animals that we've monitored are only going to mate with one animal in their life.

One animal in their life.

That means that you better be really careful about who you pick.

There must be some major mate selection going on but we have no idea what they're doing.

I have no idea.

They could be random.

We do know that they're not related.

We've only document of one alpha pair that shared a relatedness with each other.

All the rest of them are the only unrelated individuals in the pack.

They do avoid that to some extent.

They also occasionally will adopt.

Here's an example of den sharing where the alpha pair somehow ended up with other pups in their den.

So it's still monogamy they were actually the parents of the little tiny pups.

Actually four the little ones and three of the bigger ones.

We've documented that occurring at least three different times now.

They have a really strong parenting instinct both the female and the male.

Very strong parenting instincts.

It's not surprising that they would readily take on another pup if they didn't realize

it's not their own.

I mentioned that they can scale the reproduction based on resources, so this is an example.

This is very typical of our litters in Chicago.

You'll find this is typical in many cities where resources are really abundant.

So that's a litter of 11 pups.

Again genetically tested so they're all coming from a single female and a single male.

That's an example of what a monogamous species can do.

The female doesn't have to raise all those completely by herself, the male's helping.

In fact the subordinates are helping as well.

If they weren't monogamous, so for example if you look at a litter of raccoons or a litter of Bobcats, those are solitary animals the male provides no help, subordinates provide no help.

Their litter sizes are small.

Four animals typically for a cat, for a bobcat, four to five would be typical for a raccoon.

It's only what the mother or herself can raise because they're monogamous they can actually pull off huge litters.

And that's one reason why we haven't been able to exterminate them.

Finally before I move on, we have the different colors.

So I mentioned that we have a little bit of mix of a tiny bit of wolf and dog because they can interbreed so they share the same number of chromosomes.

This is from our litter these are all related they're all littermates, they have the same parents but you see a striking difference in coloration.

Brindle pups in that particular one.

The male was brindle he's the only brindle we've had that that's a sign of the historic or ancestral breeding with dogs with that dark color.

It's been rare.

That was one of the few examples that we have.

The question would be why don't we have more coy dogs? or that hybrid between coyotes and dogs in a city that has in our case we have over 300,000 dogs just in Cook County alone?

Why wouldn't that be more common?

Well there are reasons why we don't.

In the US and in Canada as well I mean most of your dogs are fixed in the cities.

The physical differences in some breeds and coyotes will prevent all that kind of breeding.

It's just hard for some breeds they're just too tiny or whatever.

Then dogs with owners are not free-ranging so the coyotes for the most part are going to avoid dogs with people.

The biggest thing is the dogs are not seasonal breeders.

Dogs come into heat at any time of the year.

I mentioned coyotes are only physically able to make during a very small window.

It has to be time just perfectly.

There's other reasons the hybrids are less vigorous, the sperm and they're asynchronized so they actually come into breeding condition out of season.

That's another kind of barrier between them.

Then I'd like to say that coyotes have standards.

So we just talked about that.

I showed you parks and these animals being territorial in parks, they're not restricted to parks, so they also live out in the developed areas.

These are packs living among people.

You'll notice the way that they use them a lot different so there's gaps and so they're trying to use every bit of green space that can find, and avoiding the areas that are used by people as much as possible.

That's what you see in other parts of the landscape.

This is what it looks like at night.

For them to be able to get from green space or green space, they have to become nocturnal.

This is one of our coyotes 571 who lives in a completely developed are or she did.

This is just her at night trying to avoid people as much as possible.

I'd like to show this because most of these people have no idea about the coyote in the neighborhood.

These people are actually inadvertently feeding the coyote with food on the front porch and I don't know if you can see but that's a cat staring at that coyote.

So the cat knows there's a coyote there but the people don't.

So this is what we see every night.

This is an example of coyotes avoiding people.

They've restricted their activity to night which they don't normally do in rural areas and then even at night they're trying to avoid people as much as possible.

Like what she's going to do here.

This is coyote number one.

This is me recapturing her ten years later.

She started the project off in March of 2000 and fortunately just by fluke, she also happens to be one of the longest living pilots in our study.

We've followed her throughout her whole life for almost 12 years.

This is me.

It was darn hard to recapture her by the way.

The point why I'm picking her out, besides the fact that she was very long lived, is this is where she lived she lived among people for over a decade.

Those pink dots are her locations during about six months of the last year of her life and that's again the community that she lived on for over a decade.

She had one mate in her life.

That's her mate.

He's affectionately called melon head, or he was, because he have this big head.

They had a variety they had eight different litters and so they produced about 70 pups between the two of them, all living among other people.

These are his purple locations.

You can see that they are perfectly lined up they were always together and then she died of natural causes,she had kidney failure and then he he upgraded and got a younger mate.

He was able to get one more litter out before he also died of natural causes too.

This is him during his last year of life.

That's a 12 year old coyote.

You don't see 12 year old coyotes in the natural world very often.

This is after he had lost his mate he was just, he had just taken on new one.

This is another Canadian film crew.

This is a videographer that set up a blind.

He's actually living in a marsh right behind a Walmart.

It looks like a natural area but that's a Walmart.

He wanted to film one of our animals I said well this guy is living in a marsh completely surrounded by people so just set up your blind and should be able to get him.

So, he's set up his blind and that's the first morning at 6 o'clock in the morning he was still setting up his camera and he realized, he looked up when that film started that was the start of his filming because Melon Head was already staring at him.

He already knew he was there.

This is his reaction.

I just I'm spending valuable time on this to point out that one of the things that we've been looking at over the years is: are these animals that have been living among people year after year after year, raising litters year after year after year, are they losing the fear of people?

He's an example of an animal that never did.

I mean he's passed now, but he never lost his fear.

His pups all grew up and never showed a change.

Some of them do.

It's more because of feeding so if they're not getting fed, it is possible for them to live among people without conflicts.

Finally I'm moving downtown.

I've been out in suburbs now we're gonna move into this urban core.

This is the last phase the last six years and what we've reallybeen focusing on because no one had done any work on coyotes in the urban core of a major metropolitan area.

This is the same Chicago area at night and you can see just visually I like it because you can see that the urban core, the downtown area, is you could argue that the ecosystem is different there than it is in the suburbs.

Maybe the Coyotes, maybe they can't even live there or if they are living there are they doing something completely different.

We moved down there it was very hard to do and we're still doing that.

I mentioned that guy that we caught this morning is on the north side of Chicago.

Here's an example of the map.

If we move over to the right that's when we're moving into the urban core.

Those are territories of those super urban coyotes and this is what it looks like.

Just zooming in for some of those packs.

Some of those alpha animals.

They still maintain their territorialism but the way that they move through the landscape becomes even more linear.

I could imagine that it's a place like Ottawa you have some nice linear features to it that might move quite a bit similarly.

This is the territory of coyote 748 one of our super urban animals.

They actually raised a litter right across from Soldier Field, this NFL stadium.

That little picture of that coyote that's on top of the parking garage across from the stadium and the Sears Tower is in the background.

They raised a litter on top of that parking garage.

It's just an example of how adaptable they are.

In terms of survival rates I'm not going to go exactly into all these numbers, but in general your your typical urban coyote, because they're not hunted and trapped in cities, immediately experiences a higher survival rate.

For our animals that annual s represents the proportion of animals that survive a year and so it's somewhere between 60 and 70% for coytoes that's a huge number.

If you were out in the country, in say the the Midwestern U.

We have hunting and trapping, the survival rate is 33% so it's half of what our adults are.

Then if you go down to the bottom, our pups the survival rate of pups is about 60% during the course of the year.

In a rural environment or they exposed to hunting and trapping it's only 13% only 13% so you can imagine that life is really good for coyotes in an urban setting.

One of the reasons why they have such a high survival rate is that they learn how to cross roads.

I'm not going to go into all the details about how we analyze that, but we can actually model that.

We can actually calculate the risk that each coyote has in terms of being hit by a car.

For example, those polygons are packs they're living just outside of O'Hare.

If we overlay the road system, you can see the different packs have a different number of roads that they might have to cross as they're going through their territory.

So you would imagine that they have different levels of risk or different probability of getting hit by a car.

I can tell you that not only for these animals but across Chicagoland, they all have the exactly the same probability of getting hit which is low.

It doesn't matter how many roads that have in their territory, it doesn't matter what their traffic volumes are, they scale their ability to move across roads based on risk.

They all have the same level of risk.

Here's an example of one of those uber urban animals crossing roads.

This is at night because they have to be nocturnal.

[Music]

This is our Lincoln Park animal and they have to use the sidewalks and the roads just like we do.

This is her going down one of the sidewalks and in just a second she's gonna cross the road in front of us.

This is a just one block off of a major thoroughfare.

There's not much traffic here so this is not this is not too exciting.

She can easily move across and not worry about traffic here, but the next frame, so there she moved in front of us the next frame.

She's going to actually move across a very busy road this is just off of Lakeshore Drive.

To do that it's just going to take a different approach.

Here she's been across the road she's gonna move over to the sidewalk actually, approaches that street and you may or may not be able to see this but there's the traffic's coming from one direction as she approaches that stop sign she's looking to the left in the direction of the oncoming traffic.

In this case, the traffic is a constant flow so she saw a gap and so she shot across immediately.

She did not hesitate.

I'm gonna show you a different strategy.

This is the same animal same night a different part of our territory.

You're gonna see a guy passing us on a bicycle.

He's staring at us because of we have a big antenna coming off the top of our truck.

Right behind him is her she's been sitting there watching the traffic and she waited until it was stopped at the light.

Then she could cross on her own.

That's the same animal you just saw using a completely different strategy for a different road.

Where there's stoplights she knows she doesn't have to hurry across she just has to wait at the corner just like all of us, so they do learn how to do this.

Real quick on diet.

I showed you at the very beginning that rodents make a large part of our or their diet.

That's true pretty much everywhere.

That's the stomach content from a single coyote in our area.

It's nine rodents.

That's a big part but our big question is human foods: like how much are they relying on us for their food both in terms of our refuse as well as for our pets?

There's a variety of different techniques for doing that.

We're the first study to actually use a technique called unstable isotopes.

What we can do is we can snip a whisker from their muzzle, one whisker and we can section that whisker into little sections and we could analyze each one of those little sections for their diet.

By doing that we can actually look at an individual animal where we know their age, their sex, their size, their condition and we can follow their diet through the length the window of time that takes to grow that whisker.

We can look at each section to see if it's recent diet or old diet.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, but it turns out that we look at carbon and nitrogen (carbon is on the x-axis) that's the important one because our human foods are all carbon-based.

More specifically it's corn based.

That's a different signature than natural foods for them.

Those gray circles are their food items and where they show up on the isotopes and what we wanted to see our human foods different on that x-axis then the natural foods.

It turns out all of those great things over on the left that's all natural food.

Then what's over on the right is all human food or pets.

That polygons up on the top are pets.

Those little colored dots scattered around there are individual coyotes.

Where they fall out on that landscape reflects what their general on diet item was.

Now that's just pooled across their segments.

So, there's more detail there, but the point is is that we show that there are some coyotes that

are using human foods, some of them are on the right-hand side of that line, that line that goes down the middle is what we call the anthropogenic line or the human food line.

There are some coyotes that are eating over there but many of them, the majority, are still eating natural foods even in the most urban parts.

These are the urban animals the ones that are really downtown and you can see that there's a huge range.

Some of them are eating human foods others are eating natural foods.

You'll see up at the top rats.

None of them are eating rats.

We have yet to document a single coyote eating a city rat.

We wish they would but they don't and it's actually it's probably pretty smart for them because there's a huge rodenticide program in Chicago to poison rats.

It's probably a good move on their part.

I just want to point out a couple of quick things.

These are two animals 740 and 748.

You actually saw one of them, 748, he's a super urban one that was raising the litter on top of the garage.

His diet is almost exclusively rabbit.

He has a completely urban, the most urban, territory you can have and yet his food is almost completely rabbit.

On the other hand you have 740 over on the right-hand side his diet is basically human or pretty close to human.

That's 740 and I caught him in a cemetery and I've shown you all these maps or all these extensive movements that these animals have made.

He got one of those really expensive $5,000 GPS collars because we thought he would be moving through the city.

This is just on the north side of the city and it turns out that he never left the cemetery.

Ever.

So that's like thousands of dollars spent all in that cemetery.

The reason and this is really important, the reason was that he's getting food.

He was getting fed by two little old ladies that adopted him and they put food out for him every day they honked their horn and he eventually will come out and eat, but he's also never lost his fear of people surprisingly.

That's what happens if you feed them you change their movement patterns and all of a sudden they are focused in a certain area thought they were not necessarily focused in before.

That's an example of that this is 740 again he's the one eating rabbits in a completely urban environment.

So you can't predict necessarily what their diet is depending on where they are.

Let me see.

Here's an example of some of that urban life.

Here's an alpha pair.

That's the metro train and that makes up the boundary for their territory.

That coyote in there is actually one of the Alpha pairs and they're marking.

That's this time of year and so that's the, yeah, the female is marking.

She's the heavier one and then the male is gonna come and mark on top of her just to give you an example of again the monogamy is expressed in terms of really tight bond.

So he's going to mark on top.

Right off of the metro.

Let me see.

This another alpha pair this is over by Lincoln Park.

You'll see one of them she's actually taking a poop right on the street and the mate is in the background.

They're actually, they're marking on the roads just like they're traveling and that's how they maintain their territorialism.

And among people.

Again that's also at night.

Then one last one and then here.

They have been getting fed by people so this is if.

We have to pick one.

I'm going to transition to conflicts real quick.

If we have to pick one particular item that is most important in terms of contributing to conflicts between coytoes and people its food.

In some cases it's people that are intentionally feeding coyotes and in other cases it's unintentional feeding.

So this will be unintentional.

This is one of our favorite coyotes going to get fed by people inadvertently this is at night.

It looks like daytime, but that's an example of inadvertently feeding them.

What happens is that when they're fed, then they change their behavior.

If it's, if it takes place over and over again they will start seeing people in places as sources of food as opposed to something to avoid terms of conflicts.

Through 2018 less than four percent of our animals generated any complaints whatsoever.

So it means 96 percent of them are living among people and doing what they're doing without even getting a complaint.

Four percent.

Generally a complaint in most cases it was just simply being seen at the wrong place at the wrong time.

We've only only 1% actually created a severe conflict like attacking a dog so it's pretty rare.

They do take cats.

This is your classic case of maybe a coyote living in a neighborhood is when a cats go missing.

I don't have time to talk about much we did a massive cat study and I was telling someone earlier it's a more complicated than that cats are actually pretty smart and they actually figured out where coyotes are if they're outside a lot if they're indoor/outdoor cats they don't have an opportunity to.

Kind of what's going on with coyotes.

So they're a bit more vulnerable.

The more important conflicts start with dogs.

This is the time of year when we do see a spike in coyote attacks on dogs.

Medium to large sized dogs, generally, are not hurt that badly either usually or nicked up a little bit if it happens.

Most of time it's not.

So what we found is that they're not using dogs as food.

They're basically, their instinct is to remove a competitor so if this is a natural environment coyotes definitely kill foxes or they remove foxes because they're competitors, not because of food.

It could be defensive.

Sometimes dogs attack coyotes and so you can have a conflict there.

Then again it's rarely for food.

This is the seasonality of the coyote attacks on dogs.

There's a big spike in February.

There's another little spike in April.

We have litters and then there's a drop-off, and then it starts increasing again in the winter.

This is the time again when there are territorial instincts are the strongest.

Here's a quick list of some of the breeds in Chicago that have been attacked by coyotes and the numbers reflect, I think it was a 16 year period. where they documented these.

What I want you to notice is that the smaller dogs tend to be more frequent especially small noisy dogs like the Shih Tzu's and the terriers.

It's not restricted to small dogs.

There are some large breeds up there.

There can be under certain circumstances a larger dog being attacked by a coyote as well.

In the most extreme form of conflict is when they attack people and it's rare when it happens though it does happen.

This is actually data that we analyzed a few years ago on a paper and we're again as they move into cities you get to see a bit more of a higher frequency of attacks on on people.

In most cases are very minor but there have been a few cases of more serious attacks.

Coyotes bite people for a wide range of reasons.

What we found there some of them are because of rabies.

There was a recent rabies case in the States over in New Hampshire that was a coyote attacked three different people, that it was infected with raccoon strain of rabies.

It can be pet related, so it often what happens in fact this happened over in Chicago last year there's a altercation between a dog and a coyote and the owner tries to protect the dog and gets bitten.

There's predatory so that is unprovoked attack on a usually small child, so there are predatory attacks and then there's one called investigator that we came up with we didn't know what to call it these are cases where the coyote and the person seemed to be mutually surprised when they getting up.

They're always minor and usually it's when the person is lying on the ground asleep.

So they're lying on the ground asleep and the coyote comes along and bites them and they wake up and it scares the crap out of both of them.

That's investigative.

There's a wide range of reasons why my coyotes might bite someone, it's not always the same.

In terms of preventing this again food is one of the biggest issues.

Pet management is a big one so especially this time of year.

You want to keep pets on leash, especially if you're walking them around green spaces.

At least have them in view of you so that you can scare coyotes off if they happen to to be in the picture.

If they are a small dog you can always, if there's a coyote around, you can pick up your dog and and walk away.

Hazing is always a good idea.

Hazing is is basically acting large toward the animal.

Not running away.

That's the opposite of hazing.

Yelling at them, shaking, we've used coffee cans filled with rocks or other things to scare a coyote away.

And then finally, this is an example of what happens when people feed coyotes.

That coyote, that is Justin my former grad student, he caught this coyote in this little marsh surrounded by a subdivision.

So you know what these maps are now, but those green dots are her locations over a one-year period.

Just look, there were no conflicts with her she avoided people's yards in fact none of those yards had any fences but she was doing everything she could to avoid people's yards for a year.

The only complaints about the Coyotes, and she was one member of a pack that was living in that Marsh, the only complaints was the noise they were making.

Because they howled.

So that was the biggest complaint.

She matured.

She left that area.

Floated as a transient across the landscape and eventually settled in his cul-de-sac in a community.

Those red locations are just to her floating around and then she eventually settled down here.

So why did she settle down there?

It turns out that but there's a sequence of three houses that were all feeding wildlife.

I mean putting a lot of food out.

So that's a picture of her I'm taking a piece of bread they're putting out bread for raccoons.

This is actually, prior to this when she lived in that marsh without any conflicts, she was exclusively nocturnal and she avoided yards that's why there were no conflicts, but once she became older and she moved into this area where they're feeding animals she completely changed her behavior and now she became a nuisance animal.

She was never aggressive, but she began to see their yards as a source of food so she spent all of her time around their yards and she became diurnal, she became active during the day.

So they wanted to have her removed.

So as an example of how feeding can change the behavior of an animal and it goes from an an animal that totally avoided a people and all conflicts with them, to now all of a sudden it's taking the first steps toward conflict.

Feeding is, if you have to point to one thing, that's one of the most important things.

One that we have control over, so we can influence how much time coyotes spend in certain areas.

How much time do they spend, how close do they come to us and how do they behave toward us.

Those are all things that we can control.

Managing the pets.

The harassment coyotes.

The hazing.

This is just another video.

I'm going back to that critter cam.

This is a cemetery that had a, they closely regulated or they thought, wildlife feeding in that cemetery.

In other words they had signage telling people not to do that and when we went, I talke to the cemetery director I asked if we could trap and put up a critter cam on a coyote, she said absolutely we'd love to be able to see that.

She assured me there was no feeding going on in that cemetery.

The very first thing that we saw once we put that camera on an animal was that animal going to a spot that had dog food.

So they were doing everything they could, but there's a lot of feeding that takes place.

In this case it's intentional so that's, those are people are intentionally feeding coyotes.

That contributes to the conflicts.

When you do have an animal that becomes aggressive, often their only solution really it's to lethally remove it.

We definitely recommend that if they they're showing a repeated pattern of a lack of fear of people and they haven't bitten anyone.

They should think about possibly removing it.

If they've bitten someone then they should definitely be removed we don't we don't there's no data no one's ever done a study to see if you can change an animal's behavior once they've gotten to the point where they attack someone.

No one wants to do that study.

Really quick, the bottom line here the coyotes are successful in cities, in spite of us, so no one introduced coyotes in the cities, no one's protected coyotes in cities, so they've come in.

In fact in Chicago and like every other city when they first appeared every municipality tried to get rid of them and all they did was succeed in being able to stay anyway.

So there it's just successful in spite of us but their ability to live with us relies on they're maintaining a certain level of fear.

We have to be able to maintain that fear and the public actually has a lot of have influence over that.

So as I mentioned, this is, we've had of a lot of support.

These are the short list of some of the people involved if you are interested in more information.

That's our website urbancoyotesearch.

So a lot of the stuff that I've talked about is even is there on even more detail.

At that it's that time I'll take questions.

If you want me to.

I know it's late.

[Speaker 1]

yeah I mean it is almost 20 after 9:00, but if we have a couple of questions that I can well just see if we can get the microphone.

[inaudible question]

Right, so the question you're noticing the size of area that we reported you know it varies quite a bit.

It depends on where they are in the landscape.

Those downtown animals need more space, the ones that are in the really high high quality habitats in the suburbs need very little space, but we're still there's pushing the boundaries on how much, how little space can they get by on.

We're already exceeding in terms of the smallness of their territories anything that's been published in the literature.

So we have some that are living in an area that's less than one square kilometer in size.

That's a full pack raising litters.

That's the bare minimum there.

That's a high quality habitat.

Those urban animals what we've discovered is that if you just look at the usable space the green space within those highly urbanized sites it actually the it accumulates.

If you just look at that you measure out it ends up being about the same amount of space so it looks like there may be a minimum threshold for them, but again it's influenced by whether or not they're getting any human food or not.

Human food can make them shrink even further like that guy in the cemetery.

[Audence member]

A few days ago a friend of mine told me about an episode with his labrador dog he let it out and there in a little green space and the dog didn't come back.

He went to find out what was going on and there were two coyotes standing over his dead body.

So they got a Labrador.

I didn't see a Labrador up when you're on your list there.

Just to comment about you're crossing the border episode.

I had the same problem going the other way and you know what I really think they're interested in.

But the one thing you don't say is I'm giving a talk because they're interested in how much money you're getting.

They think you're Barack Obama or somebody, you're getting three hundred thousand bucks and at least that's what that was my impression on the American side.

[Dr Stan Gehrt]

As an American these days I'm in no position to comment on other countries border policies at all.

[laughter]

[Audience member]

Thank you for the talk.

It's very informative.

I was wondering what the strategies you have to dispel some dangerous myths surrounding coyotes for example during our denning season where there's the myth that's going around in social media that coyotes lure dogs to predate upon and make food for the litter which is a very dangerous myth.

I was wondering what kind of strategies you have to dispel those myths?

[Dr Stan Gehrt]

Strategies to dispel the myths?

All i can do is provide the information for people to try to be informed.

So we either like, in giving talks such as these, publishing the results that we have.

The social media is a difficult thing.

I don't really know I have a good answer for that.

That's a tough one that it's gonna take someone smarter than me to try and figure out how to battle that, but that's a really good example.

So that is a myth that has been around forever.

The Coyotes lure dogs in and then the pack is hiding around and in they attack the dog.

There is certainly behavior that they exhibit that's similar to that and I can certainly understand where that myth comes from but in many cases what's just happening is that coyotes spend a lot of time by themselves but the pack mates are in proximity to them when they're chased by dog.

They're gonna go as close as fast they can to safety often there's other coyotes there already, and so it's not necessarily they're luring it that's just happens to be a coincidence that that's where they're taking them.

That myth will never go away and you'll never convince people, so I tell them that and they choose to not believe me so so I'm just trying.

[Audience member:]

At what point like you consider nuisance because right now we have coyotes are coming to our fence daily after our dog and we've done everything and this is daytime, morning, night, it doesn't matter the time of day.

We're seeing them five to six times a week like daily coming.

So at what point do you consider them a nuisance?

Second, we've done the like loud noises we've done everything and they still continue and they're not they're getting to the point where we can be within two three feet of our back fence before they'll take off like they're no longer afraid of us.

[Dr Stan Gehrt:]

Right well it's not it's not necessarily up to me to determine whether there are nuisance because I'm not the one that's living in your house.

It's not my dogs.

When I recorded those animals like the percentage that were nuisances that's those were coyotes that were reported as nuisances by the public.

I didn't determinate they're a nuisance.

It was the public determinants they were nuisance.

So you strictly decide when there are nuisance or when they're too much of a nuisance.

Not necessarily me.

It's also very difficult for me to make a decision like that when I'm not actually seeing what's the behavior is actually taking place.

Sometimes people misinterpret what they're seeing and unless they describe something to me it may or may not reflect it so it's very hard for me to provide like a definite response when I'm not actually there.

But what I can say is that if it's something that you're if it becomes threatening and you're worried about it and that's something that you should be reporting to your animal control agencies.

Your neighbors, hopefully, they would also be reporting out and if there's a shift in their behavior and they're becoming more aggressive then they may have to be removed.

Just know, and the one thing I didn't talk about when you do a removal it's always you want to try and understand why are they behaving that way because they will be replaced by other coyotes.

So if you don't understand what the root cause is, doing the removal itself may or may not answer that question.

So it's important to try and understand that.

You might check to see with neighbors and see if there's anyone that's actually doing anything that contributes to the problem as opposed to solution, such as inviting them into the problem onto their properties and things like that.

So often what we're finding is that a whole community and neighborhood everyone can be doing exactly the right things, it takes one or two people that aren't and then it's it basically minimizes all the work that you're doing.

And sorry, I don't have a better answer for you than that, but but if you're do you determine whether or not that they are nuisance not not me and it sounds like you have a building problem there.

[Speaker 1:]

Locally they if you didn't know where to call it would be 3-1-1.

[inaudible speaking]

[Speaker 1:]

I know and yeah we'll have to work on that.

If there's an imminent sense of threat then you know that it is a call for the police.

You know, if someone is feeling directly personally threatened then then it is a matter for the police.

And yes we would be talking about you know if there was an animal that attacked anyone within the city boundaries then we would be looking at addressing that obviously.

We're running very late but I know there were a couple people, so I'm just going to take two more questions, so I'm sorry everyone, we'll take two more questions after that it's up to Stan's goodwill.

I'll have a couple closing remarks after these last two questions.

[Audience member]

Hi there.

Earlier you mentioned that in the Northeast coyotes were bigger than they were in the southeast.

Does that have to do because of the temperature?

Like it often gets more colder up northeast.

Is that one of the factors?

[Dr Stan Gehrt:]

Well, we don't know for sure, but most people are leaning more toward there's a there is a slightly higher percentage of the wolf gene in your northeast as opposed to the southeast so you usually attribute that that size difference to that, but we don't really know for sure exactly.

You do have a slightly higher percentage of wolf.

It turns out that even though that was historic, there is still some hybridization taking place in Ontario between our Algoniquin wolves and coyotes.

In fact it's one of the biggest threats to your Algonquin wolves is the breeding of coyotes.

There are some recent wolf genes being introduced as well.

[Audince member]

First thank you for the really thoughtful an excellent talk.

Very informative.

North of Ottawa sort of north end of Gatineau Park and north of there there's talk of red wolves or Algonquin wolves there and overlap with coyotes as well, and I'm wondering if there's ways you can tell them apart through their vocalizations?

[Dr Stan Gehrt:]

Through the vocalizations?

I don't know.

So that's actually a really good question because we know that grey wolves and coyotes have dramatically different vocalizations and there's actually some reasons for that.

But the Algonquin wolves, I don't, I have not seen any actually measures to see how much how different they are so I don't have a good answer for that.

If you ever heard I'm sure you've heard wolves howl and coyotes.

We call wolves the opera singers of the canid world and the coyotes are the rappers.

I don't know where the Algonquin wolf is on that, which way they lean.

[laughter]

[Speaker 1:]

I'd like to thank you Stan.

Thank everyone for coming out tonight.

Unfortunately Councillor El Chantiry had to step out, but we're very grateful to all of you for coming downtown on such a snowy day.

We weren't sure what the weather would be at this time of year but it is an important time of year to talk about coyotes because as you've heard this is a big time of year for them and they're out there.

So we would just like to present Stan with a little token of our appreciation.

Thank You Stan and we hope thank you we hope you don't have any trouble getting it across the border

[Music]

Featuring “The Flowers of Canada” art exhibit by Mary Margaret Land

Speaker: Ken Farr, Canadian Forest Service 

Tuesday September 26, 2017
Ottawa City Hall, 110 Laurier Avenue West
7 p.m. Art Exhibit and Nature Expo
8 p.m. Opening remarks and Presentation 

Admission is free and will be on a first come, first served basis.

In honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary, National Forest Week, and National Tree Day (September 27), the City invites residents to learn more about Canada’s iconic trees and flowers.   This event includes displays by local organizations, an exhibit by Canadian artist Mary Margaret Land, and a presentation by Ken Farr.  Canada’s trees, flowers and other plants are among our greatest natural resources, and have helped to shape this land’s history and cultures. Many of our native species are recognised as official provincial and territorial symbols. Come learn more about these iconic species!

About the artist

Mary Margaret Land is an artist who lives in Prince Edward Island. She earned a degree in Biology from the University of Guelph, and worked as a botanical illustrator at the University for several years. Her love of flowers is reflected in many of her paintings, and led her to create “The Flowers of Canada: A Celebration of Canadian Unity,” in honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary. This series of watercolour paintings featuring the official flowers of Canada’s provinces and territories, combined with interpretive prose, took over 10 years to complete. It will be exhibited across Canada in the upcoming months.

About our guest speaker

Ken Farr is a science manager and senior policy advisor with the Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada. His current responsibilities include international trade in forest products, urban forest science, invasive forest pests, and plant quarantine issues. He is the Canadian Forest Service Scientific Authority representative for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Ken taught horticulture, urban forestry and arboriculture in the Horticulture Department of Algonquin College, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and dendrology at the University of Toronto School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. He was project dendrologist for the reference text Trees in Canada by John Laird Farrar, and is author of the Canadian Forest Service publication, The Forests of Canada.

For more information, contact:

Amy MacPherson, Planner
City of Ottawa
Planning, Infrastructure and Economic Development
Email: amy.macpherson@ottawa.ca
Tel.: 613-580-2424, ext. 14873

Speaker: Michael Runtz, Carleton University

Thursday April 6, 2017
Ben Franklin Place
101 Centrepointe Drive
6 p.m. Wildlife Expo
7 p.m. Opening remarks and Presentation

Admission is free.

In honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary, and leading up to National Wildlife Week (April 9 to15), the City invites residents to learn more about Canada’s iconic wildlife.   This event includes displays by local organizations and a presentation by renowned naturalist Michael Runtz.  Canada’s rich diversity of wildlife is part of our national heritage, and continues to shape our country’s global identity.  Beavers, loons and moose are all readily recognized as Canadian symbols, and can all be found living in Ottawa.  Come celebrate our wild neighbours!

About our guest speaker:

Michael Runtz has been an avid birdwatcher since the age of five, and has worked as an interpretive naturalist in Algonquin Provincial and Point Pelee National parks. Michael was a founding director of the Ontario Field Ornithologists and the Macnamara Field Naturalists’ Club in Arnprior, of which he is still president.  He is also an accomplished author, educator, television host, and photographer, recognized through numerous education, conservation, and photography awards.  His most recent book, Dam Builders: the Natural History of Beavers and their Ponds, was nominated for the John Burroughs Medal, and was a runner-up for the prestigious Lane Anderson Award.  Michael currently teaches Natural History and Ornithology courses at Ottawa’s Carleton University where his highly visual courses continue to attract record enrolments.

Registration is now closed.

For more information, contact:

Amy MacPherson, Planner
Planning, Infrastructure and Economic Development
email: amy.macpherson@ottawa.ca
tel: 613-580-2424 ext. 14873

Speaker, Professor Marc Berman, University of Chicago

Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Horticultural Building, Lansdowne Park
6 p.m. Healthy Communities Expo
7 p.m. Opening remarks and Presentation

Admission is free.

Ottawa's trees clean our air, improve the health of our residents, beautify our communities, and improve our quality of life. You are invited to learn more by attending this event which includes displays by organizations focused on environment and healthy living and a presentation by Professor Marc Berman. His study, conducted by a team of researchers from the United States, Canada, and Australia, researched the implications of an increase of urban trees in Toronto and residents feeling healthier.

The event will feature the opening of Photosynthesis 2, a Tree Fest Ottawa photography exhibit. Be one of the first to tour the exhibit.

The event is brought to you in partnership with Tree Fest Ottawa and Ottawa Public Health.

About our guest speaker:

Marc Berman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. His research interest includes the ability of natural environments to improve attention and memory. Understanding the relationship between individual psychological and neural processing and environmental factors are at the heart of his research.

For more information, contact:
Lise Guevremont, Planner
City of Ottawa
Planning, Infrastructure and Economic Development
Email: lise.guevremont@ottawa.ca
613-580-2424 ext. 27784

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Ben Franklin Place
101 Centrepointe Drive

6 to 7 p.m. Citizen science displays
7 to 8 p.m Presentations

Citizen science has become an increasingly popular and important method of scientific investigation. Propelled by new technologies, especially social media, it allows researchers to collect and analyze scientific data at scales and in volumes that were never before feasible or affordable. From the analysis of ocean sounds to the tracking of butterfly migration, from global change to backyard bio-blitzes, citizen science is drawing ordinary people into some of the most important and transformative research of the 21 Century.

The event will feature two impressive speakers.

Dr. Jeremy Kerr from the University of Ottawa is a co-founder of Bumblebeewatch.org and a pioneer in citizen science. He will discuss his experiences and how the public can become involved in ongoing research programs. Dr. Kerr is an engaging speaker, whose work and research has been featured in the journals Science and Nature, CBC’s Quirks and Quarks, The National, and the Rick Mercer Report.

Andy Kenney is a Senior Lecturer Emeritus from the University of Toronto. He will present a new community-based approach to urban forest stewardship: the Neighbourwoods Program. The basis of the program is a comprehensive inventory approach that can be carried out by volunteers to inform the development of a neighbourhood stewardship strategy.

The event will include displays by organizations active in citizen science in Ottawa. Participants will learn how they can get involved in a wide range of exciting projects.

World Wildlife Day 

Monday, March 2, 2015
6 p.m. Environment Trade Show
7:30 p.m. Panel discussion
Jean Pigott Place, Ottawa City Hall
110 Laurier Avenue West

Register here!

Did you know?

• Canada is proud to join 170 other countries to celebrate World Wildlife Day to raise awareness of the world's fauna and flora.
• Ottawa has over 2,660 hectares of natural areas within its boundaries.
• Ottawa supports over 500 species of wildlife.

The City of Ottawa invites you to this interactive event on urban areas and wildlife conservation including:

• How do animals live in the city?
• How do we grow as a city with green spaces for wildlife to live?
• There are many possibilities if we work together

Panellists

This esteemed line-up of thought-leaders and wildlife conservation champions will share experiences on how cities and communities can contribute to wildlife conservation.

David Chernushenko
Councillor, Capital Ward
Chair of Environment Committee

Janet Mason
Chair of the Ottawa Stewardship Council

Brenda Van Sleeuwen
Conservation Biologist, Nature Conservancy of Canada

Send your questions and thoughts to wildlife-faune@ottawa.ca and we will do our best to ensure they are addressed at this event.  Register here!

Lise Guèvremont, MCIP RPP
Planner, Land Use and Natural Systems Policy
Planning and Growth Management
613-580-2424, ext. 27784

Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Environmental Expo and Birds of Ottawa Slide Show from 6 to 9 p.m.
Formal Presentation by Bruce di Labio at 7 p.m.
Ben Franklin Place
101 Centrepointe Drive

This event focused on Ottawa's birds, and how they survive (and even thrive!) in the winter. This was the final event to be held in 2014.

Renowned local birder, Bruce di Labio, spoke about how Ottawa's birds spend their winters in and around Ottawa. Bruce has led bird watching groups locally and internationally for many years. He also writes about birds in various publications, including the weekly World of Birds column in the Ottawa Citizen.

A nature slide show as well as an environmental exposition was offered for residents to learn more about Ottawa's wildlife, natural environment and local environmental initiatives. The evening was a great success with over 200 people in attendance!

Results of Photo Contest 

The City held a photography contest in conjunction with the Wildlife Speaker Series event, Winter is for the Birds.

Residents were invited to submit photographs of wild birds taken in Ottawa or elsewhere in the National Capital Region. All 227 photographs received were displayed in a public slideshow before and after the Wildlife Speaker Series presentation on December 9. The five best photos, as selected by a panel of judges, were professionally printed, mounted and presented to the winners as well as displayed for a limited time at City Hall. They are also being displayed here on ottawa.ca, with the permission of the photographers, for everyone to enjoy!

FIRST PLACE

"Little Green Heron Stalking Prey"
Taken by Al Robinson at Mud Lake, Ottawa 

SECOND PLACE

"The Watcher"
Taken by Daniel Parent at Green's Creek, Ottawa 

THIRD PLACE

"Grebe with Chicks"
Taken by Jim Cumming at Aquaview Pond, Orleans 

HONOURABLE MENTION

"Crows in Snowstorm"
Taken by Sandy Sharkey at Leitrim Road, Ottawa 

HONOURABLE MENTION

"Great Blue Heron"
Taken by David White at Petrie Island, Ottawa 

For more information:

Amy MacPherson
Planning and Growth Management
613-580-2424, ext. 14873
E-mail: amy.macpherson@ottawa.ca

Thursday, September 18, 2014
7 to 9 p.m.
Ben Franklin Place
101 Centrepointe Drive

The City of Ottawa will be holding its third Wildlife Speakers Series event on Thursday, September 18 at 7 p.m. at Ben Franklin Place, 101 Centrepointe Drive. This session will address white-tailed deer.

People and deer have a long history together. White-tailed deer are valued as a game species, and for their grace and beauty, but they can also become a pest to farmers and gardeners. Motor vehicle collisions involving deer are a major safety concern, especially during the fall.

The City has invited experts from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry to present information on white-tailed deer ecology and biology to improve our understanding of these wild neighbours.

Michael Gatt is the Ministry's Senior Wildlife Biologist for our region. He has worked with a variety of public stakeholders to develop key strategies for the prevention and management of conflicts with deer and other wildlife.

Dr. Brent Patterson is a research scientist with the Ministry, and an adjunct professor with Trent University. He has spent many years exploring the ecology of deer and their canine predators (wolves and coyotes).

In addition to the presentation, there will be a nature slideshow and an environmental exposition from 6 to 9 p.m. at Ben Franklin Place for residents to learn more about Ottawa's wildlife, natural environment and local environmental initiatives. The City will also provide information on traffic safety (Speeding Costs You Dearly) and public health (Lyme disease).

The City will hold one more event in the Wildlife Speakers Series this year. The series is intended to increase residents' knowledge and appreciation of wildlife and promote coexistence through understanding and respect. All of these events are free of charge.

For more information:
Amy MacPherson
Planning and Growth Management
613-580-2424, ext. 14873
E-mail: amy.macpherson@ottawa.ca

Friday, April 11, 2014
7 to 9 p.m.
Council Chambers, City Hall
110 Laurier Avenue West

The City of Ottawa will be marking National Wildlife Week with the second session of its Wildlife Speakers Series on Friday, April 11 at 7 p.m. in Andrew S. Haydon Hall (Council Chambers) at City Hall, 110 Laurier Avenue West. The topic of this session is Backyard Biodiversity: Welcoming nature into your yard, not your home.

The featured guest speakers are Sarah Kirkpatrick-Wahl from Nature Canada, and Bill Dowd, CEO of Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control, Canada's largest wildlife control company.

Ms. Kirkpatrick-Wahl is a conservation biologist, who is currently working on the NatureHood program, which aims to connect people with nature in urban environments – right in their backyards.

Mr. Dowd has over 25 years of experience in helping people avoid or resolve conflicts with wildlife around residential settings. He is respected as an expert in the field.

In addition to the presentations, there will be a nature slideshow and an environmental exposition from 6 to 9 p.m. in Jean Pigott Place for residents to learn more about Ottawa's wildlife and natural environment and local environmental initiatives. Participants will include the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club and the Rideau Valley Wildlife Sanctuary. Ontario Electronic Stewardship will also have a booth and will be accepting old electronic equipment for recycling.

The City will hold two more events in the Wildlife Speakers Series this year. The series is intended to increase residents' knowledge and appreciation of wildlife and promote coexistence through understanding and respect. All of these events are free of charge.

Coyotes - Getting to know our wiley neighbours

Friday, February 28
7 to 9 p.m. 
Ben Franklin Place (101 Centrepointe Drive)

Dr. Stan Gehrt, world renowned wildlife ecologist from Ohio State University, will provide insight on how people in urban and rural developments can coexist with coyotes, at the first event of the City's Wildlife Speakers' Series at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 28, at Ben Franklin Place (101 Centrepointe Drive).

Dr. Gehrt is the lead investigator in the Cook County Coyote Project, which has been studying the coyote population in the greater Chicago metropolitan area since 2000. This project has led to many interesting discoveries about how coyotes behave in different settings, and how they interact with humans and other animals.

Dr. Gehrt will share his extensive knowledge and experience to provide a better understanding of coyotes – including how and why they live in settled areas. He will also show how residents can avoid problems with coyotes, such as taking simple preventative measures around their properties.

In addition to the presentation, information booths will also be on-hand for residents to acquire more information on Ottawa's wildlife and natural environment. These booths will be on display from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.

The City will hold three more events in the Wildlife Speakers' Series this year. The series is intended to increase residents' knowledge and appreciation of wildlife and promote coexistence through understanding and respect.

The next event is planned for April on the topic of Backyard Biodiversity.

For more information:

Amy MacPherson
Planning and Growth Management
613-580-2424, ext. 14873
E-mail: amy.macpherson@ottawa.ca