Starving owls ending up at northern Ontario wildlife rescues in triple their usual numbers

A wildlife rehabilitation centre in Val Caron, Ont. says it's seen triple the number of injured and emaciated owls this winter that it typically sees in a winter season.

And it blames the situation on snow.  

"They're starving," said Gloria Morissette, the authorized wildlife custodian at the Turtle Pond Wildlife Centre.

"The deep snow is making it harder for the owls to find their prey, the mice and rodents."

The centre has cared for between 12 and 15 of the birds so far this winter, Morissette said, far more than the three or four they'd typically see.

"I think we've seen just about every native owl to northern Ontario this year," she said. 

"We've seen snowy. We've had great greys come through – the great horned owls. We've had several boreal owls, which is not something we admit every year, and we have a little saw-whet."

This winter is in irruption year, explained Jenn Salo, an authorized wildlife custodian for birds of prey in Thunder Bay.

An irruption year

That means there's been a crash in the vole population in the Arctic, prompting owls and other birds that would generally stay in the north to fly south in search of food. 

"A lot of them are coming into our areas in starving conditions," she said.

"And then when the weather gets tough or we get huge dumps of snow — like southern Ontario has gotten record amounts of snow -- that makes it extremely hard for the owls to hunt."

Salo, like Morissette has taken in more than a dozen owls this year.

That's up from an average of five in a typical season, she said.

The Owl Foundation, a specialist raptor rescue on the Niagara peninsula, issued an Ontario Owl Alert on its Facebook page in February saying that eastern screech owls were struggling to catch prey due to deep snow. 

It urged people to call a rehab organization if they see an owl in distress. 

Owls typically fly away from humans, Morissette said, but emaciated owls will just stay in one place.

"We had one little barred owl just admitted last week, and he'd been sitting on a person's deck railing for three days," she said. 

"And by the third day, he was sitting on the railing and kind of leaning into the side of the house. And so they called us, and they were able to bring it into us, and if they hadn't brought it in when they did, I don't think that bird would've survived another day."

Wildlife rehabilitator says stay away from the owls

Any owl that stays in one place for more than 24 hours probably needs help, she added.

Many of the owls at Turtle Pond have arrived from cities to the north, such as Timmins, Morissette said.

But one was discovered in downtown Sudbury.

Salo urged people who see owls to stay away from them and not to encourage others to crowd around them and take photographs.

"Humans flock to the locations where these owls are trying to hunt, not realizing that these owls are on the verge of starvation, and human presence makes it much more difficult to hunt," she said.

"And it stresses the bird out having all these eyes on them."

Turtle Pond has not seen any owls with avian flu yet, Morissette said, but wildlife rescues in southern Ontario have warned people not to approach sick birds and to call rescues to come and collect them.

The Windsor Essex County Health Unit has warned anyone wanting to interact with wild birds to don personal protective equipment such as a mask and gloves.