The Manitoba Chapter Wildlife Society Newsletter

Presidents Corner

  This is my first opportunity to address you since assuming the presidency last March. As I sit here writing this I am reminded what a wonderful place Manitoba can be, as it is another glorious fall day. We have been treated to beautiful weather this fall, making up (somewhat) for the damp, cool spring and early summer that we experienced. I hope that all of you had a wonderful summer and were able to spend time experiencing Manitoba's wildlife either through your research or summer activities. I was able to spend some time in Riding Mountain, Pinawa and the Whiteshell. We were also treated to a family of Long-eared Owls calling our yard home for the summer (see Jim Duncan's article on the owl phenomenon this summer). I was able to attend the TWS meeting in Madison, Wisconsin a few weeks ago and Don Sexton was attended the CMPS meeting in August. See reviews of both of these meetings in this newsletter.

The executive has met once already this fall and we have lined up, what I hope will be, an enjoyable and educational series of events. Our first event will be the second annual Holiday Mixer on December 1 (mark your calendars), with Dr. Gordon Goldsborough giving a presentation on the "rich and famous" of Delta Marsh. Hope to see you all there. We will also be hosting the Delta "get-away" weekend (3 - 5 February) and our annual meeting the beginning of March. We are planning to hold a one day "mini" conference in conjunction with our annual meeting so starting thinking about potential papers you might like to present. More details on both of these events will follow in the next couple of months.

If you have any information of interest to our membership please forward it for inclusion in our winter newsletter (January 2006), we are always looking for material from our membership. I hope to see you all at the Holiday mixer, where we can catch up on each others activities. So until then, I hope you are able to spend some time enjoying the great outdoors of Manitoba. - Karla Guyn

WINGED AMBASSADOR PASSES ON

Great Gray Owl "Lady Gray'l" Provided 21 Years of Education and Fun
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October 17, 2005
Manitoba Government News Release
News Media Services, Rm 29, Legislative Bldg.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 0V8
Ph: (204) 945-3746 Fax: (204) 945-3988
E-MAIL nmservices@leg.gov.mb.ca
*******************

Lady Gray'l, a great gray owl that educated and entertained thousands of Manitobans for more than twenty years, has passed away.

"People who had the opportunity to meet and visit with Lady Gray'l knew the bird as a wonderfully tame great gray owl and an excellent representative of her species and Manitoba wildlife," said Conservation Minister Stan Struthers, when he learned of the bird's passing. "The owl's handler Dr. Bob Nero and this beautiful owl travelled together throughout Manitoba to over 200 schools, educating students and teachers about birds of prey, especially owls and the importance of habitat protection."

Nero, who is a volunteer ecologist with the Wildlife and Ecosystem Protection Branch of Manitoba Conservation, found the owl injured and starving as a young nestling in 1984. The bird was nursed back to health by volunteers with the Wildlife Haven. Nero is a familiar name to many Manitobans because of his extensive education program for the conservation of wildlife, in particular, great gray owls.

"This great gray owl was an excellent representative of the wonderful natural areas in Manitoba and of her species, designated Manitoba's provincial bird on July 16, 1987," said Struthers. "Dr. Nero and Gray'l educated many about owls and the importance of habitat protection and also appeared at many fundraising and social events delighting young and old."

Contributions from appearances were donated to organizations caring for injured wildlife and to cancer research. In addition, funds raised by Lady Gray'l helped to fund six graduate students who studied owls in Manitoba and elsewhere.

In addition to caring for Lady Gray'l, Nero is a naturalist, ornithologist, vocational archaeologist and poet. Many of his nine books were inspired by Lady Gray'l including his newest entitled Growing Old Together, and Lady Gray'l - Owl with a Mission.

Lady Gray'l, Bob and Ruth Nero. Summer 2005
Photo: Birch Nero

CHAPTER NEWS

TWS Madison:
"Following in Leopold's Footsteps"
Karla Guyn

CMPS 2005 Annual Meeting
August 10-12, 2005
Medora ND
Don Sexton

The CMPS Meeting was held in Medora, in the heart of North Dakota's Badlands and on the doorstep of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP). The meeting was hosted by the North Dakota Chapter, TWS and had over 70 attendees. Larry Bidlake and I attended from Manitoba and all states in the Section were represented.

The meeting had the usual mix of field trips and paper sessions. On day one there was a business meeting (see CMPS website for business meeting details) followed by a mixer, BBQ dinner and fund raising auction. Over $1250 US was raised at the auction with the highlight, for those familiar with the tradition, the crampon auction. As the crampon had been 'lost' for over a year, Steve Riley (Pres. CMPS 2004-2005) was given the opportunity to bid and purchase said item. Immediately thereafter it was re-auctioned whereby Gary White (incoming CMPS Pres) purchased it!

Day 2 featured the field trip to TRNP. Discussion included wildlife management and habitat issues including invasive plant species, fire management and management of large ungulates (primarily bison, elk and feral horses). The afternoon portion of the field trip included management issues in the Little Missouri National Grasslands, covering black tailed prairie dogs, gas/oil wells and exploration, grazing and riparian management. To those who have never been on a CMPS field trip, they are always noteworthy in that attendees get into areas of the host province/state to see landscapes and wildlife/wildlife issues that they would otherwise likely never experience.

Day 3 was the paper session with a focus on ND Badlands habitat issues including bison, elk, grassland management planning, water developments on arid habitat and ND bighorn sheep management. Additionally there were papers on habitat or wildlife issues such as wind power, sage grouse, whitetailed and blacktailed prairie dogs, chronic wasting disease, coal bed methane, and wild turkeys.

For those that didn't attend , you missed a great opportunity to view Badlands landscapes, hear about and see the associated habitat and wildlife issues. As well there were excellent opportunities to see some prairie wildlife, including mule deer, elk, bison, big horn sheep, pronghorn, black tailed prairie dogs, burrowing owl, prairie falcon, and a prairie rattlesnake.

Of note regarding the CMPS Executive, Tanys Uhman ( Manitoba) was reelected as a board member. Next year the CMPS meeting is slated for Laramie, Wyoming.

Special thanks for the generous donations for the CMPS auction go to the following from Manitoba:

• Delta Waterfowl
• Don Sexton
• Ducks Unlimited Canada
• Fort Whyte Center
• Larry Bidlake
• Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation
• Manitoba Chapter- The Wildlife Society
• Rick Baydack
• Travel Manitoba
• University of Manitoba- Faculty of Environment , Earth and Resources
  
  

Breeding Long-eared Owls Invade Southern Manitoba in 2005.
Jim Duncan

The largest documented irruption of Great Gray Owls in southern Canada and the northern United States in winter 2004-2005 has received much attention by amateur naturalists and professional biologists. But another, more cryptic phenomenon related to climate and food availability has taken place with other owl species, at least in Manitoba in summer 2005.

Unusual high rain in summer and fall 2004 resulted in conditions that prevented many farmers from harvesting alfalfa and other agricultural crops routinely grown on the Manitoba prairie. It appears that meadow voles (a kind of field mouse) took advantage of the resulting abundant food supply and bred, well, like voles during winter months under a nice warm blanket of insulating snow. The resulting wet spring conditions in 2005 further prevented regular agricultural activities in many areas, and the resulting explosion of vole populations drew the attention of more than alarmed urban and rural homeowners. It seems that Long-eared Owls (Asio otus), and to a lesser quantified degree, Short-eared Owls (Asio flammeus), decided to cut short their migration and settle down to take advantage of the large supply of meadow voles and breed in southern Manitoba in high numbers.

To date (August 2005), thanks to the reports from landowners, staff from Manitoba Conservation, and staff and volunteers with The Wildlife Haven, I have tabulated information on 34 Long-eared Owl nests and/or breeding sites and 10 locations with evidence of breeding Short-eared Owls, at least a ten-fold increase over normal years. In what I can only now describe as a June-July "owl-o-rama", I visited 23 of these locations personally to interview landowners and to see first hand the behaviour, nest sites, and habitat of these prolific owls. Evident was landowner's excitement and generally protective attitude towards the owls. This summer's plethora of Long-eared and Short-eared owls afforded many Manitoba citizens with their first personal encounter with an owl. Owls were often found nesting in old crow and magpie nests (owls do not build their own nests) in trees immediately adjacent occupied houses!

Since young owls typically leave the nest as downy chicks before they can fly, many people found one or more young flightless owl on the ground and innocently, but often incorrectly assumed that these chicks were abandoned or orphaned. Subsequently at many long-eared owl chicks found their way to the care of The Wildlife Haven. I tried to reunite chicks with their parents as best I could while I visited nest sites to study them. Thus, seven of 13 long-eared owl chicks turned into The Wildlife Haven were either returned to their original nest or they were fostered to a different family group in the wild-thank goodness owl parents cannot count! What happened to the other six you ask? Four were transported to Katherine McKeever, a veteran owl rehabilitator in Vineland Ontario who runs The Owl Foundation, where they are being raised by unreleasable adult long-eared owls to avoid imprinting, and two were kindly taken in by the Assiniboine Park Zoo.

This summer many of the people I met asked me "Where did all these owls come from?" Biologists like Dr. Stuart Houston of Saskatchewan have earlier provided some insight on the nomadic nature of Asio owls in Saskatchewan, Canada. Stuart noted that while the migratory and nomadic nature of Short-eared Owls is well recognized, that of the Long-eared Owl is somewhat cryptic. The secretive nature of the more nocturnal Long-eared Owl appears to mask the extent to which they are nomadic. I am preparing a more detailed report on the breeding of high numbers of Asio owls in southern Manitoba this summer that will include an examination of how well Manitoba's volunteer-based spring nocturnal owl survey tracked this dramatic fluctuation in the number of the enigmatic and seemingly nomadic Long-eared Owl.

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Dale Wrubleski
President Elect

A native of Saskatchewan, I've been fortunate to have lived across much of the prairie region. My undergrad, in general biology, is from the University of Regina. I did my M.Sc. at the University of Manitoba and my Ph.D. at the University of Alberta. For both degrees I studied the Chironomidae (midges) at Delta Marsh. If you've ever been to Delta, you'll know the importance of these small flies to the local ecology. I then spent a few years working at Ducks Unlimited writing up some marsh vegetation studies, and then moved on to work for the U.S. E.P.A. in Duluth, Minnesota. While there I worked on a field project looking at the effects of agricultural tillage on prairie potholes near Woodworth, North Dakota. Following this project I returned to Winnipeg and now work as a wetlands research scientist with the Institute for Wetland and Waterfowl Research (IWWR), the research arm of Ducks Unlimited. I have several projects near completion or ongoing at Delta Marsh, including a fisheries survey, a large field project examining the impacts of common carp, and a study of the long-term changes in the emergent plant community. I'm currently helping to develop a waterbird survey for the marsh. Along with Dr. Gordon Goldsborough, I teach a Wetlands Ecology course at Delta. When not at Delta or Oak Hammock, I enjoy gardening, camping and fishing.

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