Waterfowl Struggle With Cold

The brutal winter weather in 2014 and 2015 has taken a toll on overwintering waterfowl along Lake Ontario. Cold temperature records were set in southern Ontario in February 2015 and there was a significant freeze-over of the lake, making it very difficult for birds to find food.

Some citizens in communities along the lake have been feeding the birds, unable to stand by and watch them starve to death. But there is a debate about whether feeding wildlife is really the right thing to do, or even in the birds’ best interest. Some municipalities have by-laws against it.

The marina in Cobourg, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, was largely covered with ice and slush in February. Thousands of ducks, geese, swans and gulls huddled on the ice and in small patches of open water. The shore was covered with a hard layer of icy snow.

During the worst of the cold spells in 2014 and 2015, Cobourg resident Bill Thompson brought buckets of corn daily to feed the birds. The town gave him tickets for disobeying its by-law.

Many citizens supported Thompson’s efforts to help the hungry birds, including Lisa Peterson, a licensed wildlife custodian from Frankford (top) and Peterborough resident Ross Davis (bottom).

They only feed the birds during extreme cold weather, when the birds cannot find food on their own. Whenever someone shows up with food, there is a frenzy among the hungry birds to get to the chow line. Buckets of corn disappear in minutes.

It is a constant struggle for the birds to plough their way through the ice and slush. Getting on and off the icy shoreline is especially tricky.

Thompson has seen birds struggling to free their feet which become frozen in the ice. Some never escape and die as a result, while others break their legs or lose a foot. This goose, whom he named Peggy, lost her foot in 2014 but was still around in winter 2015.

The complex relationship between climate change and the cold weather outbreaks in the past two years raises concerns that the wildlife feeding dilemma might be repeated more often in the future.

Text and images by Lydia Dotto, a Peterborough-based science and nature photographer and writer. Capturing wildlife images is Lydia’s passion and her greatest photographic challenge.