Rare Animal May Be Headed Back To The Wild

Most Nova Scotians have never seen a fisher in the wild. This large member of the weasel family, valued for its fur, has been driven by trapping and lost mature forest to the brink of extirpation in this province. Not many remain. However, one is at the Hope for Wildlife rehabilitation center in Seaforth and it may soon be headed back to the wild. 




Ronda Brennan photo

  The fisher is one of the larger members of the mustelid (weasel) family, second in size in Nova Scotia only to the otter. Its general coloration and features in some ways suggest a smaller version of an even larger and geographically more distant cousin, the wolverine. However, the largest males seldom weigh more than six kilograms.



In July 2010, when a six-week old fisher came to Hope for Wildlife after being injured on a highway near Weymouth, probably by a car, the staff at that rescue and rehabilitation center faced a formidable task. The animal, named Henderson by a local veterinarian was not expected to survive, but he did. This left Hope for Wildlife with the task of healing and raising a rare animal whose species they had no experience with.

Because the fisher is a predator, it’s natural to learn survival skills by spending year or more with its family group. The problem was, this animal’s family group was somewhere on the Sissaboo River, far from its pen at Seaforth.

For Hope for Wildlife director Hope Swinimer, the fisher’s recovery, maturing and acquiring survival skills all needed special attention.

“I try to go by the rules that all the animals that come to our facility are important,” says Swinimer. “However, when an animal like this comes in, there’s so much to learn and so much help is needed. I even contacted people in the United States on their techniques on how they rehab fishers. From the point of view of a learning experience, it was huge.”

The fisher is now a young adult and will be released in a large enclosure at the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park to see if he has skills to provide for himself. If he proves to Natural Resources officials that he has, he will be freed, likely with a monitoring device to track his progress

Fortunately, a few pockets of fisher have survived and there has been a reintroduction program on the Tobeatic sanctuary of south western Nova Scotia. That may be where Henderson’s family originated, since the Sissaboo rises there. Sending a member of a threatened population home would be a good thing.

Coywolf: A New Name For A New Animal

Sometimes, the name we call a thing is the key that shapes our knowledge of it. In Nova Scotia, that is very true of the animal we call the Eastern coyote. That name carries baggage from cartoons and the old west of a scrawny scavenger. It would be more accurate if we used the name it has in parts of Ontario and the USA. There, some people call it a coywolf.

From the mid-twentieth century on, this animal undertook a complicated eastward migration, filling habitat left vacant by a near-relative, the red wolf, whose bloodline goes directly back about 700,000 years to the ancestor of all wolves. When what started as a coyote reached our coast, it showed a hefty dose of wolf genes. The nature of the beast had been changed,

The history of wolves is complicated and hotly debated, but the red wolf provides the link. This was what the first Europeans encountered, smaller than the grey wolf and occupying the hardwood lands east of the Mississippi and south of the Canadian Shield. By the 1980s, hunting, trapping, poisoning, and fire had wiped it out in the wild. It was re-introduced to several preserves, with limited success only in North Carolina..



Somewhere between ancestral wolf and red wolf, two things happened. The western family branch evolved to suit the habitat and became coyote. Meanwhile, primitive wolves crossed the Bering land bridge to Eurasia and developed into the wolves known there. Later, some returned, larger and of a different colour, to become the grey wolves of our north,

As the coyote travelled east, it would have met both wolf species. The last remnants of the red wolf, its close relative, it interbred with. Grey wolves normally kill coyotes, but somehow, according to some scientists, the genes still got mixed in.

To make things even more complicated, Ontario’s Algonquin National Park has wolves that may not be part of any of the other species. They are called the Eastern wolf. There’s a scientific tiff ongoing about whether they are an offshoot of the red wolf or a separate sub-species.

In any case, some or all of these wolves beefed up the coyote. By the time it hit the Atlantic coast, it was no longer the 14 kilogram plains scavenger. The new version often weighs 20 kilograms or more and tests done in Maine show some to be genetically as much wolf as coyote.

More changed than just size. From the Western coyote, a tolerance for humans and their habitations was inherited, but hunting habits became wolf-like. While the western coyote is a loner, wolves hunt in packs. So does this newcomer. I’ve seen a group of them drive a deer onto February lake ice so they could pull it down.

You may call that an Eastern coyote act if you wish.  I prefer coywolf.

The larger, highly adaptable animals "have the wolf characteristics of pack hunting and aggression and the coyote characteristics of lack of fear of human-developed areas," says Trent University geneticist Bradley White, who's been studying the hybrids for 12 years. 

(from The Toronto Star)







First Wildlife Hospital Announced for NS

Injured Nova Scotia wildlife now have their own private place in the province’s world of veterinary medicine. The Hope for Wildlife Society, based in Seaforth, Halifax County, has opened a veterinary hospital that will treat nothing but wildlife. It is the first of its kind in the province.



Hope for Wildlife staffers (l-r) Allison Dube, Dr. Barry
McEachern,and Hope Swinimer examin an injured bald eagle

 

The new professionally-staffed hospital will allow injured animals to receive medical care at the Seaforth rehabilitation center without being transported off-site. Currently, medical care is provided free of charge by the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital and the Metro Animal Emergency Clinic, both more than 30 minutes away.

The organization`s founder and director, Hope Swinimer, says transporting injured wildlife causes them unnecessary stress, which can be harmful if they are already weakened. In the future, says Swinimer, birds and animals will be stabilized and receive primary treatment on-site in Seaforth. Only a most severe surgical case may require transfer to a city hospital.

“The vet hospitals are still really important to us and I want them to know how much we appreciate what they do for us, and that we still need them,” says Swinimer. “More than anything, we want to lighten their load while giving the best care possible to the wildlife.”

Local veterinarians will staff the hospital as volunteers. One of them, Dr. Barry MacEachern of the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital, has been helping Hope for Wildlife for several years. He hopes having this unique on-site certified wildlife hospital will elevate the stature of the organization and make clear the nature of its work.

``We`re not a band-aid place for wildlife,” says MacEachern. ``We`re not a sanctuary. We truly are a rehabilitation center. “

The society, known internationally for its animal rescue and rehabilitation, worked for several years to assemble and equip the hospital. Much of the equipment was donated by local veterinary hospitals. The new facility is certified by the Nova Scotia Veterinary Medical Association, which means all standards, licenses, and inspections have been met for it to be a legal veterinary hospital in Nova Scotia.

Hope for Wildlife relies on volunteers for most of its rescue and rehabilitation work. It is a non-profit charitable organization operating with both federal and provincial permits and annually releases about 2000 rehabilitated birds and animals.

In 2011, Hope for Wildlife`s name was also known as the title of an internationally-syndicated television show seen across Canada as well as in the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Singapore, and Thailand. It is now shooting its third season.

Hope for Wildlife was also in 2011 the title of a best-selling Nova Scotian book telling the story of the society’s work. At present it is sold out across Canada and a second printing has been ordered.
Hope for Wildlife is now in its 16th year of operation.

For more information, please contact
Hope Swinimer, Founder and Director, Hope for Wildlife Society, (902) 489-4673, hopeswinimer@gmail.com
Ray MacLeod home:(902) 434-5491 mobile: (902) 489-3502 raymacleod@eastlink.ca


For additional background
about The Hope for Wildlife Society: http://hopeforwildlife.org/pages/home
about the television series: http://hopeforwildlife.org/pages/news_and_media/the_TV_series
about the book: http://hopeforwildlife.org/pages/news_and_media/the_book

A Pelican Called Ralph (and other stories)

I really can’t get out of my head (and believe me, I’ve tried!) the image of noted wildlife rescuer Hope Swinimer with a blanket draped over her arm begging entrance to Dartmouth’s home of “adult entertainment”, Ralph’s Place. That has been one of several enduring images from Hope for Wildlife in the four weeks following their late-August Open House, a time of year when things usually mellow out and slow down. Not this year, however. Strange and uncommon events kept Hope for Wildlife in the news across Canada and around the world.

First there was a seagull who decided to impale himself on the lightning rod of a downtown Halifax church. He was up there for two days before the fire department helped him down. Pictures from that event went everywhere, including news services in Europe and India. The media focus was so tunnel-visioned on the gull story that they almost missed the Department of Natural Resources nabbing people trying to sell a fawn on the internet as a house pet. Both the gull and the deer ended up at Swinimer’s Seaforth farm, and with them came a wave of media attention.

The dust had barely settled around those incidents when hurricane Earl swept in, bringing with it many surprises. Newborn squirrels, raccoons, and song birds began showing up, just when Hope for Wildlife was releasing akin foundlings from last spring. What followed them was not pretty. More than one hundred birds, some merely needing food and a place to rest but others smashed by the gales, started to pour into the Seaforth facility, and many were deep-sea birds of unusual kinds. Two were Royal Terns, a species that summers off Florida and the West Indies and should have been heading for Argentina and Africa for the winter months. Neither survived. There were many Storm Petrels, another bird rarely seen by land folk, and most of them made it.

As this mass of birds was being sorted out, the Department of Natural Resources got itself into the news again. Using undercover agents, plus sea and air transport, DNR raided Tancook Island in Mahone Bay to rescue a captive deer. The three year old doe was crated and air-lifted off Tancook , then trucked to Hope for Wildlife. She was placed in a deer enclosure full of orphaned fawns and became an instant celebrity.

That same day, Hope Swinimer was sitting in her office at the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital when someone rushed in to tell her there was a pelican on Main Street in front of Ralphs’ Place. Pelican spottings in Nova Scotia are on the rare side, so it took a few more reports before she felt this one deserved checking out. Since the sighting was only two buildings away from her office, she decided to go herself, and quickly met witnesses who said the bird had left Ralph’s parking lot but now was up on the building’s roof. Without really considering the ramifications, Swinimer took her capture blanket, swung open the front door of Ralph’s Place, and asked to go up to the roof. A startled clerk denied her and called for the manager. Patrons began to stare and Swinimer quickly became aware of her situation and what pub people must be thinking of this strange woman with a blanket trying to talk her way into an adult entertainment facility, claiming to be looking for a lost pelican.

Thankfully, someone outside called to her that the bird had left, so she quit in pursuit, tracking it to the parking lot of McDonald’s next door. Swinimer was able to identify it as a Brown Pelican, a bird that lived from the Carolinas southward, and knew it was another guest courtesy of Earl, but before she could act, the bird flew to the top of the Dartmouth Veterinary Clinic, then to Burger King where it began mooching fries and hamburgers, and causing traffic problems. It fled when she approached, but this time showed just how weak storm travel had made it by slamming into the glass front of a nearby building and stunning itself. Swinimer made the capture and took her new guest, now known as Ralph for obvious reasons, to Seaforth for rehabilitation,. Meanwhile, media were once again all over her for the story, including a live interview on CBC Radio’s Information Morning. Host Don Connolly tried to sum up the adventure.

“Going from Ralph’s to McDonald’s, to Burger King, and then knocking himself out. Sounds like a Saturday night, doesn’t it?” he suggested. “Sounds like a bad Saturday night,”

Bad for the bird,perhaps, but not for Hope for Wildlife. However, it was definitely part of a September that had not been normal. Perhaps "unusual" would have been a better word.

The Slow Fade-Out of the Black Duck

One June morning about 25 years ago, I was leading a high school canoe camping trip down a stiillwater in Kings County when we rounded an elbow bend and found ourselves in the middle of a panicking family of Black Duck. Little ones scattered and hid while mom did her best to convince us she was an easy lunch. It was a teachable moment, so I used it and then moved the group on.
As we swung the next turn in the meander, a girl in a canoe near me shouted “Look. Mr. MacLeod! A real duck!” It was a Mallard male.

In 30 or more years on those waters, I’d never seen a wild Mallard. I’d heard rumours they were moving eastward from their prairie homeland, but the ubiquitous Black Duck had been there all my life and was what I expected, and in memories still do. I remember being slightly annoyed this suburbanite had been so brainwashed by cartoons and story books that she thought the fancy-dressed Mallard drake was the “real duck”. Sadly, I had no idea she was accurately predicting the future.

This August, I stuck my head into Hope Swinimer’s office and asked what was new that day for animals. Two Kestrel and another family of ducklings, the Director of Hope for Wildlife told me, so I asked her the species of her duck babies.
\
“How should I know?” she replied. “I can’t tell the difference any more. They all look the same these days.”

Swinimer went on to tell me this had been a very busy year for duck rescues. Most of them appeared to be Black Ducks, but had coloration differences that shouldn’t be there and confused the identification issue.

“They are all really pretty little ducks, but we really can’t tell right now what they all are,” she said.
The problem is, the Black Duck is a creature under siege. In Nova Scotia, the number of moms who get run down every year as they lead their ducklings across a road is increasing. More little ones show up at Hope for Wildlife as a result.

“If the mother is leading them across a road, they are going to water. It’s not a random thing.” Swinimer explained. “You may not see water, you may only see them holding up traffic, but you can take as a certainty that water is there.”

The other contributor is genetic, and there are a lot of scientific questions being asked right now about whether the Black Duck as a species will continue to exist. It started in the 1950s, but whether from habitat change, climate shift, disease, hunting, food shortages, or pressure from the Mallard is not yet known. What is known is that there are 50% less Black Ducks around now than back then.

More and more, the Mallard is being considered the source of the problem. It is believed the Black Duck (Anas rubripes) and the Mallard Duck (Anas platyrhynchos) are descended from a recent common ancestor. Genetically, they are almost identical. The Black is dark brown in both male and female, quite similar to the Mallard female. It is the green-headed breeding plumage of the Mallard drake that differs. When the two species overlap, as they have done for several decades in Nova Scotia, the Mallard drakes not only force Black Ducks out of their territory, they mate with their females.

The result has become a hybrid duck, once an anomaly but in the past few years more and more common. In some parts of the Atlantic Flyway, it is now estimated one out of every five Black Ducks carries Mallard DNA. Sometimes, strange feather patterns make it obvious, but more often a glint of the green Mallard drake head colour during mating season is the only evidence. As Hope Swinimer said, it’s making identifying the young ones very difficult.

In nature, most hybrids can’t reproduce, but that’s not true in this case. The complicating factor is that studies show 67% of the offspring of a Mallard/Black cross are male. For some reason, fewer females are produced, and those that are born of a cross-match seldom live to breeding age. This means it is the female Black Duck genes that are being gradually squeezed out of the pool.

Even before the hybridization crisis, Mallard drakes generally outnumber females and were very aggressieve during mating season. Unpaired males group together and engage in "rape flights" in which they attempt to islotate a female and attack her until she weakens, at which point they all mate with her. They sometimes also do this to smaller Mallard males. Often, the result is that the bird being attacked drowns. This "mate with anything" Mallard drake impulse is considered one of the reasons for hybridization, as a "rape flight" often involves a female of another duck species..

There's evidence that while the Black/Mallard cross may be the most familiar to us in Eastern Canada, it is not the only one. Mallard drakes are not only moving into Black Duck territory and dominating its females, they are doing it to many species throughout the Northerm Hemisphere. Hybrids reported include the Gadwall (Anas strepera), Pintail (Anas acuta), Green-winged and Eurasian Teal (Anas crecca), and Spot-billed Duck (Anas poecilorhyncha). At least those ducks are members of the same genetic family. The Mallard is also known to have reproduced with the Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata) and the Wood Duck (Aix sponsa). In all, Mallards have shown the ability to cross breed with 63 duck species.

Whether it is evolution or something we’ve done to give Mallard males a social advantage is not known, but as Hope Swinimer said, it is getting much harder to say for certain that what appears to be a Black Duck is actually to be found in even in the most up-to-date Peterson Field Guide.

The Fox Who Stole Hearts

When I was young, my father would frequently regale me with stories about foxes. He was a conductor on the old Dominion Atlantic Railway through the Annapolis Valley and often saw them on the dyke lands as his train passed through.

For several years, his favourite subject was one fox who had the company of a small white dog, and together they romp through my memory to this day in my father’s stories. Years later, I found out other Kentville railway men had brought home tales of this dykeland odd couple, and some of their children knew and remembered with me.

I mention this because I’m absolutely certain there will be children now and children to come who will hear, tell, and remember stories of Sweet Pea. Foxes of my past came to mind when I heard in January that this most popular of all residents at the Hope For Wildlife facility at Seaforth had died. There was something about this little lady, crippled in her first year, that needed to be told. My intention was to do that telling here, but then I received a poem from Hope For Wildlife volunteer Karla Henderson that says everything I could, and more.

Run Sweet Pea, Run!

This is the time of year you most notice a fox,
a wily orange blur past white snow and dark spruce
writ large in our consciousness:
Kit. Swift. Cape. Silver.
Cunning King in Luke 13.
Vulpes vulpes for the scientist.
Reynard for the English folklorist, Regin or vixen for the German.
Disney caricatures for Robin Hood and Maid Marion.
The Fox! In Stravinsky’s Renard, and barter for the Voyageurs.
These are people’s foxes.

But you, Sweet Pea?

You’ve made us fox-people for nine years.
A jetsam orphan on the Eastern Shore, bedding down
on wild pea under a boardwalk;
a Shepherd is your second foe,
rickets, your third, and you lose a leg.
Amid this chaos, you must wonder Is this life? Is anybody there?
Hope arrives with meat and mice and might
and before long, the word gets around of
a little orange piñata brimming with treasures.

Oh! The hats you don:
Mama tutor to young kits,
patient for the most part with all those foxes in boxes.
Star attraction for old and young

who chant your name up the drive with great anticipation.
Favourite resident for volunteers searching for your acknowledgement,
carting your cuisine closer: Oh, hello, you greet them as gently as your footfall.
A fugitive, three times busting out of Dodge; we fret daily, nightly: Is she back?
Mostly, though, you rescue us―
From thinking that society and nature have nothing in common.
From thinking there is no such thing as love at first sight.
Thank you, fearless little friend.
Long may you run!

Karla J. Henderson
January 2010

In my dictionary of literary terms, I use the term Ode to describe a serious but lyrical poem of high praise. Certainly, under my definition, what Karla Henderson wrote here is an Ode, which is only fitting. Sweet Pea, the little fox from Seaforth, was indeed owed a lot.

Long may she run!

Rescuing A Great Horned Owl

“This owl certainly has an attitude,” Hope Swinimer told me.

“You couldn’t pay me enough to pick that bird up” said a friend, looking over my shoulder at a picture taken by passerby David Chaisson of Ketch Harbour.

We were discussing a Great Horned Owl, so I was not surprised. What I found fascinating is the courageous manner in which this most dangerous of all Canadian owls came to be at Hope For Wildlife’s shelter.

The Great Horned Owl is large, powerful, and known to be aggressive towards humans. Its talons have a crushing power of 500 lbs. per square inch. Compare that to 60 for the hand of the average adult human male. It will defend its territory aggressively against any creature of any size.

Of course, all predators are territorial to some degree, and this protective instinct doesn’t make the Great Horned Owl a woodland monster. It’s just an owl being an owl, with its own manner of doing it.

However, it also makes the Great Horned the only owl in North America to have killed a human. Granted, it was a slash to the neck of someone trying to check eggs in a nest, but a fact is a fact, which is why Hope’s story of how the owl she dubbed “Adam” was rescued on Cole Harbour’s Salt Marsh Trail on New Year’s Day past has a special edge in the telling.

The hero of the story is Steve Mitchell of Lawrencetown. He, with dog Geisha and partner Mary Leigh Petersen, was walking about half way across the Cole Harbour dykeland when they found the large owl, obviously with an injured wing.

Their first reaction was to call Hope, but there was no answer so they left a message, and thinking that would take care of it, resumed their walk. Immediately a mob of about 50 crows began circling, so the trio returned to the owl.

A rescue appeared to be needed, so Steve, using Mary Leigh’s down vest as a wrap, softly captured the injured owl. It was then, according to Mary Leigh, that they realized their situation.