Spring has Sprung

It's official. Spring is here.

You can tell by looking at the calendar. Or you can look out the window, where every day new birds are arriving. Some of these come straight to the bird feeders, grateful to find a snack waiting them upon arrival. It's been a quiet winter for birds at the feeders around here -- the theory is (fingers crossed) that the very mild winter allowed them to stay out in the woods, or farther to the south of us. Whatever the reason, we are delighted to see the blue jays, chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers back to visit.

Add to the mix the starlings, cowbirds and grackles who have now arrived, and it's getting noisy out there!

In the fields, the sharp cries of the killdeer announce that winter truly is OVER. A robin has been sighted, hop hop hopping along.

Canada geese are heard in flight -- and sighted on the nearby golf courses. We hope they stay there. We love the look of the geese, we just prefer to admire them from a distance, and go to extreme measures to ensure they don't decide our docks and beaches are good places to gather. As recently as five years ago it was incredibly rare to see a Canada goose floating about on our lake -- they just touched down for a quick rest before continuing their northern migration. Now, like the Toronto geese, they seem to stick around, and that's a shame. It means we can no longer greet those fantastic V-shaped and honking flights with as much delight. A pair of geese, with a pair of goslings, drifting softly by of an evening is a sight to dream about. 50 geese taking over the docks and shores is not.

A gentleman with a cottage on Dwight Bay called me to report that his neighbour was not only feeding the deer on her front lawn all winter long, but in the summr was actively feeding the ducks and the geese. The lots along this particular stretch of lake are narrow and small. The docks are close together. This gentleman can't take his grandkids to the beach, through the droppings of some 40 deer, because she was last summer feeding 50 geese... and untold ducks. The docks, the beaches, the very water supply for those cottages was fouled. The geese were happy. The lady looking out her window at them was perhaps happy.

He called me to get some advice on how to keep the geese away. In such close quarters, with such a ready food supply, he's got a big job ahead. In truth, the geese would be far better off, as would the deer, if left to live their wild lives in the wild.

You can give up gardening, if you live in a heavy deer populated area, but it's hard to give up swimming and playing on the beach if you've got a cottage on Lake of Bays...

Keeping your shorelines natural, with shrubbery rather than lawns, helps discourage the geese from coming ashore. Of course, then they'll sit on your dock... Or just dabble along in the shallows. When sweet reason fails with the neighbours, problems arise. The techniques used by airports, for example, are not neighbourhood friendly -- patrol dogs; loud banging noises; brightly flashing lights... none of these will get you invited back for coffee.

There is a universe of difference between a child tossing a bit of food to a small family of ducklings and someone putting out 40 pounds of cracked corn... Up on Limberlost Road, the good folks have a similar problem. Not with geese... or deer... they have a resident who enjoys watching Black Bears. Last summer, she enjoyed watching about 13 of them eat the food she put out on her front lawn. The people living near her, who suddenly had 13 bears ambling across their property, enjoyed it much less. The people who used to ride their bikes past this house had to cease and desist -- a rolling mountain bike is like a lure for a bear to chase. There is no good reason to feed predators, to lure them into your yard, or near your neighbours. Bears belong in the woods, and away from people. People have a responsibility to those bears, not to leave garbage, or other food items, around that would lure the bears close to houses. The slogan is To Feed A Bear is to Kill a Bear. Bears that have lost their natural fear and respect for people can be lethally dangerous, and are all too frequently shot for the crime of being hungry.

We enjoy seeing the wildlife around us -- but we also respect that wildlife, and we prefer when it remains wild. It is an issue when the deer who were born on our property and who remain with us year round are so bold as to go inside the stable to eat the chicken food (which is in the chicken coop... which an enterprising deer can just barely reach by sticking its head through the chicken sized door) We have timothy grass hay outside in winter for the horses... and the deer take advantage of that. And we have a lot of open lawns and natural fields around the resort -- and the deer take advantage of that. And yes, we don't mind when people toss a carrot or an apple to the deer, cameras in hand and children's eyes wide. But we do not advocate the "dry lot feeding technique" we see of people putting out huge amounts of high protein alfalfa hay and cracked corn just for the deer. It plays havoc with their metabolism, which is intended to slow down in the winter so they can survive on twigs and buds and the like, and it means they require WAAAAAY more food to get by.

We also have a local wolf pack, who were busy this winter, reducing the herd numbers of the deer. You hear some folk complain about that, siding with the deer -- sometimes siding with the very deer they are feeding in large numbers (one of the feeding stations was boasting they had almost 100 deer coming in for food). If you congregate a large number of prey species in one place, you should expect to find the predator species arrive.

It's like hopping on the cruise boat -- a lot of folk seem to congregate at that day long buffet...