It is Montreal and the year is 1896. The city, with its half a million citizens, is alive and vibrant and enjoying one of its greatest periods of growth.
In February, the Amateur Hockey Association’s Montreal Victorias lost the Stanley Cup to the Winnipeg Victorias, the first time the coveted cup was won by a team outside Quebec. On June 27, Louis Minier and his assistant, Louis Pupier, made history by projecting animated views using a Cinematographe Lumière at the Palace Theatre on St-Laurent Blvd.
But Ernest Wintle was not interested in any of those events – he was joyfully fingering a brand-spanking-new copy of his book, The Birds of Montreal, before grabbing his gun and heading to Nuns’ Island to collect some new owl specimens for his skin collection. And if he happened to shoot some birds that he didn’t need, he could always sell them to a museum for about 30 cents.
That is the way things were for birds in those days. That same year, the last remaining flock of passenger pigeons, about 250,000 birds in all, was massacred in one day in the U.S. Midwest by so-called sportsmen who had rallied to an advertisement about the presence of this last big nesting flock. Four years later, a 14-year old in Ohio shot the world’s very last wild pigeon. We would see them no more.
Hunting passenger pigeons was once a popular sport.
I actually have a copy of Wintle’s book; it was passed onto me sometime during my stint as a bird columnist for the Montreal Gazette, a treat I enjoyed for 28 years, until 2012. My copy is literally crumbling in my hands as I turn the pages, but it does provide some insights into the history of Montreal’s bird life.
For instance, the first thing I noticed was the lack of mention of the northern cardinal. Today in Montreal, the striking scarlet plumage of a male cardinal against a snowy backdrop is something to behold; its colouring no doubt contributes to its status as the top desired bird species at bird feeders in North America.
Another quote that actually stuck in my craw was “Isle St. Paul, or Nuns’ Island, in the St-Lawrence River, between the Lachine rapids and Victoria bridge, is a favourite resort for Owls during the winter months, especially the Snowy Owl.” Well, things have really changed on that island since Wintle’s days, and not in the owls’ favour. But more on that later.
The avifauna of Montreal is in a constant state of flux. For instance, while the iconic northern cardinal first nested in southern Quebec in 1965, it did not really colonize the island of Montreal until sometime well after 1979, along with the house finch. Another example of change is the increasing number of birds of prey being spotted recently, even over our downtown skyscrapers.
It is also painfully obvious that the urban sprawl typical of any large city is claiming much of our green spaces and bird habitats. According to many ornithologists, climate change is opening the door to new arrivals while negatively affecting other species; we call them “winners” and “losers.” And while we no longer shoot owls for their skins, local birds are always facing new obstacles.
Here is my “bird’s eye view” of how Montreal’s bird populations have evolved over the last several decades.
Winners
Let’s start with some “winners,” and specifically with a group of birds that my former readers will know all too well — birds of prey, or raptors. From 1936 to 1942, a famous pair of peregrine falcons bred on the Sun Life Building, the same female mating with three different males and producing 22 young. But because of eggshell thinning caused by the rampant use of organochlorine pesticides like DDT, from the ’40s through to the early ’70s, the city’s skyscape no longer rang with the raucous cries of the falcons.
Today, thanks in part to the banning of these chemicals in Canada in 1969 and in the U.S. in 1972, combined with captive breeding and release programs and public education, I can now name no less than 10 active territories in the Montreal environs, found on all the major bridges, and on tall buildings such as the old Royal Bank building on St-Jacques St. in Old Montreal, which later became Montreal’s Stock Exchange, St-Joseph’s oratory, and in some quarries.
Two other bird-eating raptor species, the merlin and Cooper’s hawk, are becoming quite common in Montreal’s suburban neighbourhoods, much to the chagrin of those operating bird feeding stations in their backyards. The merlins got an extra boost from exploding American crow populations because the little falcons use the latter’s abandoned nests for breeding.
Even bald eagles and osprey are beginning to show renewed interest in the shorelines of the city’s rivers and lakes. The most interesting case is the turkey vulture, affectionately called TVs by birders. Buoyantly soaring for hours on V-shaped wings and equally at home in downtown Montreal and the wooded ridges in the surrounding countryside, this large, blackish carrion-eater has slowly increased its numbers in southern Quebec in the last three decades to the point of being a common sight today all across southern Canada, not to mention a fairly reliable sign of spring.
Canada Goose populations have exploded, while populations of mallards, hooded mergansers and wood ducks in particular have increased by more than 50 per cent.
For the last 15 years, I have witnessed the growing herd of Canada geese on the Macdonald Campus of McGill University in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, starting at zero to now numbering into the thousands, depending on the time of year. The only time they leave that area is when Lake St-Louis is frozen over, thus depriving the geese of a night roosting site safe from dogs, foxes and coyotes.
While the ubiquitous mallard ducks have grown fat from the handouts of misguided folks in Montreal’s parks, and the spectacularly colourful wood ducks now breed in provisioned wooden nest boxes, the restoration and preservation of the St-Lawrence River’s shorelines is ultimately responsible. There was is another price to be paid, though, for cleaner waters: the population of the double-crested cormorant — arguably the most hated bird in North America due to its reputation for eating valuable game fish and its ability to turn islands on the St-Lawrence into barren wasteland when its sheer numbers and acidic feces kill all vegetation — is also growing.
Two other interesting water birds that are slowly colonizing Montreal waters are the great black-backed gull and the great egret. None of the duck species will be happy with the former’s appearance; I have personally watched those huge gulls swallow ducklings whole. And great blue herons, whose population is holding steady, do not enjoy the competition from those large white egrets. On many occasions, aggressive great blue herons have been seen harassing and chasing the somewhat smaller great egrets from fertile hunting waters.
Montreal’s great blue herons are not enjoying the competition from the increasing presence of egrets.
In 1999, Francois Morneau, a Montreal ornithologist, and five other experts documented substantial changes in the avifauna of Montreal parks from 1979 to 1994. They concluded that 17 bird species, including the northern cardinal and the housefinch, had significantly increased numbers over that period, while the populations of four species, including the song sparrow and brown thrasher, had sharply declined. They attributed the abundance of at least some songbird species to the introduction of bird feeder stations in Montreal’s six largest parks in winter.
It would be hard to deny that the popularity of backyard bird feeding among the general public, particularly in winter, had much to do with the gradual range expansion northward of other songbirds. Today, in addition to the cardinal and the mourning dove, Montrealers are delighted with the growing presence of Carolina wrens, tufted titmice and red-bellied woodpeckers at their feeders.
Speaking of woodpeckers, it is hard not to feel a certain measure of awe when gazing upon a crow-sized pileated woodpecker chiselling out huge chunks of wood, even if it is from a favourite (but likely diseased) backyard tree. At one time on the way out, these carpenters have made a great comeback as local forests have matured, and although yet to be proven, possibly also as a result of the large number of trees damaged or killed by Quebec’s infamous ice storm in 1998. Numbers of the yellow-bellied sapsucker (a medium-size woodpecker whose name can garner giggles from non-birders) are also on the rise.
A pileated woodpecker pounds a power pole in the Westmount in April 2013.
Forty years ago, who would have believed that wild turkeys would not only be seen in the Montreal region with regularity, but actually in enough numbers to force Laval police to issue caution warnings to drivers about these rather hefty birds crossing the Highway 440 service road in April of 2014?! At one time native to southern Quebec, the wild turkey was extirpated in the early 1900s, but starting in the 1970s gradually reintroduced itself from populations artificially bolstered in New York, Vermont and southern Ontario — to the point where both hunters and those putting out birdseed in Montreal’s far-flung suburbs now get to enjoy them.
Montreal’s Top 10 Bird Species on the increase in the Montreal area
Pileated woodpecker
Yellow-bellied sapsucker
Eastern screech-owl
Northern cardinal
Turkey vulture
Cooper’s hawk
Wild turkey
Merlin
Canada goose
Common raven
(source: Denis Lepage, Data and Web Site Management, Quebec Breeding Bird Atlas)
Losers
But it is not all good news for Montreal’s bird populations. There are “losers,” too. Since the city is no longer endowed with any wild grassland, species that favour that habitat are in serious decline. One now has to travel far from the city to see eastern meadowlarks, upland sandpipers and even bobolinks. Loggerhead shrikes, once seen in the Montreal area, have now been extirpated from all of Quebec.
Aside from a few pairs nesting in the cavities of residential and industrial buildings, the American kestrel, a bird I studied for four decades, is facing a serious decline in population but all over northeastern North America for reasons yet unknown. I will never forget one of the last games played by the Expos in the Olympic Stadium, when the evening crowd was treated to the sight of a kestrel hawking insects around the dazzling lights. (Well, at least I was!) Some experts are partly blaming the surging numbers of Cooper’s hawks, as more and more of the tiny falcons are ending up in the stomachs of these bird-eating hawks. The same fate is befalling the smallish sharp-shinned hawk.
A male (right) and female American kestrel have a spat near Newberry, Fla. The species used to be abundant in Montreal.
But the worst news features our aerial insectivores. Since 1970, populations of chimney swifts, bank swallows and purple martins have declined in the Montreal region, by almost 95 per cent. While the causes of their demise are also unknown, local factors such as reduced insect populations due to pesticide use and other factors, loss of nesting habitat, and/or changes in their wintering grounds far to the south are likely to blame.
In my first 20 years as a graduate student studying birds of prey at Macdonald College in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, I used to enjoy the “peent” calls of the common nighthawks flitting back and forth to swallow insects with their huge gapes reminiscent of “Cookie Monster” on Sesame Street. Then one day, I realized that I heard them no more. The decreasing population of large flying insects, such as flying beetles, that nutritionally provide a “big bang for their buck,” along with the decreasing availability of buildings in the Montreal area with pebbled, flat roofs for nesting, likely both contributed to their disappearance from Montreal skies.
The evening grosbeak is in decline in the Montreal area.
Montreal’s Top 10 declining bird species
Upland sandpiper
Eastern meadowlark
Ring-billed gull
Evening grosbeak
Northern pintail
Gray partridge
Blue-winged teal
Purple martin
Bank swallow
Swainson’s thrush
(source: Denis Lepage, Data and Web Site Management, Quebec Breeding Bird Atlas)
Factors
While the reasons for the decline in many of Montreal’s bird populations have yet to be fully understood, two factors, in the eyes of many bird experts, are indisputable.
First, glass windows in residential and industrial buildings in the Montreal region kill between one million and 2 million birds annually. The fatal collisions occur when birds interpret the reflection in the glass as more sky, or when migrating birds are attracted to indoor lights seen through windows at night. Turning off the bright lights in large municipal structures, as well as muting the reflections on windows with special coatings or other visible materials would go a long way toward resolving this problem. The proliferation of communication towers also contributes significantly to bird collision mortality in the city.
Second, cat-owners in Montreal are probably sick and tired of hearing me harp on this, but this city’s cats kill their fair share of the 200 million birds slain each year in Canada. In my humble opinion, the solution is simple — urge cat-owners to not allow their pets to roam freely outdoors, especially during the fledging season for birds in early summer.
Pollution in the form of oil spills, pesticides, industrial chemicals and heavy metals all degrade the quality of air, water and terrestrial habitats in the city, and they do sicken and kill birds. Even if we have banned the use of many toxic chemicals in North America, they are still in widespread use elsewhere, including in the wintering grounds of our birds.
The greatest concern for Montreal’s bird populations though, is surely the inexorable loss of their habitat, especially for those migratory species that spend their summers here and their winters in southern countries. In the Caribbean and in Central and South America, natural habitats are rapidly being converted for human use. Logging has significantly reduced the forest habitat and agriculture is gobbling up both natural forests and grasslands. Beach tourism and shrimp aquaculture are replacing coastal habitats, including salt marshes and mangroves.
Things are no different here at home. From the early ’70s onward, I watched almost all of the grassland and forest habitat of Île Perrot, west of Montreal, slowly change acre by acre into housing and its associated infrastructure — shopping centres, car dealerships, big box stores.
One can say the same for Laval and the South Shore. Even the municipal park on Île Bizard, perhaps my long-standing favourite birding place, is now suffering from the encroachment of human activities such as golf, and the growth of habitat less favourable for a diversity of bird life.
As for Nuns’ Island, that formerly terrific woodland famous for allowing one to see as many as seven owl species in one winter’s day, condo development has reduced it to a shadow of its former self. No wooded tangle, no mice, no owls.
In short, unless birds adapt to living in urban and farmland habitats, they are running out of places to breed, feed and rest.
A snowy owl rests on a light standard near highway 13 and highway 40, near Trudeau Airport, on Jan. 6, 2015.
And what about that climate change? That factor is not so easy to figure out; there are no studies out there that directly connect the changes in Montreal’s bird populations to a warming climate. Subtly warming temperatures (although you would not know it this winter), have likely made our winters more bearable for those bird species that have moved north into southern Quebec from the United States, such as the cardinal, mourning dove, Carolina wren, tufted titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker and wild turkey.
Similarly, Montreal’s birds will likely be found breeding further north in the province as the climate warms. If the St-Lawrence River, Lake St-Louis and Lake of Two Mountains are frozen over for a shorter period each year, that can only be a good thing for birds favouring watery habitats.
On the other hand, climate change can skew the timing of food availability, this throwing off the timing of migration and the fledging of young.
Rising sea levels can also flood coastal stopover habitats for migrating birds, as well as cause more frequent, stronger storms that lead to their increased mortality.
To get a better idea of how Montreal’s birds will fare in the face of climate change, we must await long-term detailed analyses of data on weather, bird presence and numbers. For these, we rely on information collected in the form of “citizen science” by institutions like the McGill Bird Observatory, which monitors bird migration, as well as the annual Breeding Bird Surveys, Christmas Bird Counts, and E-Bird, a compilation of birders’ checklist records submitted to Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology.
For bird enthusiasts
Regardless of the decline in some of Montreal’s bird species, bird-watching as a hobby still remains highly popular. Technology has undoubtedly played a big role.
“People can access birding information at a click of a button on their smartphones,” said Alain Goulet, owner of Nature Expert, a downtown retail store focusing largely on bird hobby supplies. “Someone in the field can look at a bird with their spotting scope, take a picture of it with their smartphone and share it via social media within seconds.”
During a snowstorm in December 2007, a cardinal rests in a Montreal West bush.
I urge anyone interested in birds in the Montreal region and beyond, especially young folk, to become a member of Bird Protection Quebec, one of the oldest birding clubs in Canada. Besides offering fluently bilingual services and free, guided weekend birding trips to all of the best places in the Montreal area, the organization makes regular solid contributions toward bird conservation and public awareness and is an all-round excellent source of information for birdwatchers.
Besides owning any one of several field guides to identify birds, I also strongly recommend two superb books for birding in the Montreal region: Green Birding, by Richard Gregson (Stackpole Books, 2013), and Birdfinding in the Montreal Area, by Pierre Bannon (Province of Quebec Society for the Protection of Birds, 1991).
It will indeed be quite interesting to see how the future unfolds for Montreal’s bird life in the coming years. As for the last two decades, we should have a better picture when the next Quebec Breeding Bird Atlas is published. The first, involving volunteers recording birds in assigned “squares” of territory, covered the period from 1984 to 1989, and was published in 1995. The second and latest, carried out by Regroupement QuébecOiseaux, the Canadian Wildlife Service of Environment Canada and Bird Studies Canada, covers the 2010 to 2014, will hopefully be published soon.
As a wee teaser, I have been informed by an insider that “the rusty blackbird was found in 12 squares in the first atlas (in the Montreal area), but in none during the second atlas. Same with the olive-sided flycatcher and the bay-breasted warbler (10 down to 0 squares).” As I said, Montreal’s birds are in a constant state of flux.
Ten of the Best Places to Bird in Montreal:
Île-Bizard municipal park
Lazare Sand Pits
Parc Point-du-Moulin, Île-Perrot
Île-de-la-Visitation nature park
Summit Park
Mount-Royal Cemetery
Nuns’ Island
Morgan Arboretum
L’Anse-à-l’orme nature park
Pointe-aux-Prairies nature park
Some useful websites for Montreal birders:
http://fatbirder.com/links_geo/america_canada/quebec.html
http://pqspb.org/bpqpoq/
http://www.birdingpal.org/pq.htm
http://www.ccfa-montreal.com/en/
http://ebird.org/ebird/qc/subnational2/CA-QC-MR?yr=all
David M. Bird was the Montreal Gazette’s longtime bird columnist, and is an emeritus professor of wildlife biology at McGill University.
david.bird@mcgill.ca