Vandals destroy bird boxes on Holmes Road

Jeff Green (with a report from Judy Borovski) | Jun 03, 2020

During the week of May 30, someone knocked down two bird boxes, which were hanging off limbs on a township road allowance at the side of Holmes Road near Inverary.

The bird boxes weren’t hanging that high off the ground, making them an easy target. They also weren’t harming anyone.

They were, however, part of a long-term effort by a local naturalist, to help specific species of birds recover their numbers in this part of Eastern Ontario. One of the boxes was a bluebird box which had nest of bluebirds, and the other was a tree swallow box which had a nest of tree swallows.

If the individual or individuals who destroyed these nests are caught, they can be charged with violating the Migratory Species Act, an offence which carries a fine of up to $25,000.

Both species have been in decline, and there are a number of potential causes, including habitat loss.

In the case of the tree swallow, a Queen’s University Study at the nearby Queen’s University Biological Station has been testing the hypothesis that the more variable spring weather in our region over the past decade or so, a mix of cold, wet weather and hot weather, has had an effect on the insect population at crucial moments in the breeding cycle of birds such as the tree swallow, Tree Swallows are insectivores.

“We frame this hypothesis around the special case of birds that forage on flying insects for whom effects mediated by their shared food resource have been proposed to cause avian aerial insectivores’ decline worldwide. Flying insects are inactive during cold, wet or windy conditions, effectively reducing food availability to zero even if insect abundance remains otherwise unchanged,” says the preamble to the study.

In other words, it’s not that we are suffering from a lack of insects in our region, but on those cold, windy spring days in May, the insects aren’t active just when tree swallows need to feed.

John Williamson, who farms near the location where the bird boxes were destroyed, is a friend of the naturalist who have been putting up bird boxes aimed at facilitating nesting of different species in decline, including blue birds, tree swallows, and kestrels.

“He puts up boxes in strategic locations for different species; owls, kestrels. It’s quite a lot of work that he puts in, trying to increase the population of these birds,” Williamson said,

Williamson is accepting calls from anyone who sees anyone doing damage or has information on the damage or theft of the boxes. He can be reaches at 613-353-7335, or call the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry at 1-877-847-7667.

It is not unusual for some of the bird boxes to be taken, usually later in the summer when they are empty, by people who want to put thethem on their own property, but it is rare and concerning for two to be destroyed when they are active nests.

(The News is not identifying the naturalist at this time for fear that identifying who he is and where he lives may result in undue attention which could threaten other successful nests he has put up in the region)