Chapter 10

Barred From Nova Scotia

Owls are strange birds. They are mysteriously nocturnal, their family tree is ancient and inspires awe, and those big saucer eyes can make a person very nervous. They also seem to come down with strange, undiagnosable ailments that sometimes make a wildlife rehabilitation worker wonder if a feathered wise guy is setting them up for something. Then there are those times when, just as a Hope for Wildlife staffer seems to have an owl mystery solved, something incredibly unexpected and ironic happens, leaving mere humans to wonder if these silent flyers really can see into the unknown. Or if perhaps, just maybe, there is a good reason for those thousands of years of myth and legend.

Cluckie

It was a tale that grew with the telling, a story full of all the elements and devices of good fiction. Irony was abundant, as was suspense. The plot unfolded with twists, turns, and surprise shifts in setting on its way to a surprise ending. It had the sweet aroma of a bestseller, perhaps even a Hollywood movie. The fact that it was all true only made it more interesting.

Cluckie was an owl of mystery from the very beginning. Some workers swore he came from the Annapolis Valley, others that he was a local from Seaforth. One volunteer stated flatly that he was dropped off at Hope for Wildlife Society’s rehabilitation centre by a hurried someone who would not stay around to fill out paperwork. Another said she thought he was part of a shipment of injured wildlife from the Department of Natural Resources. There was a story that he was found on the ground, thin and weak from hunger, and immediately rushed to Hope for Wildlife, but in another version, someone had him for a week before seeking help when they could no longer get him to eat. The when, where, and how of his origins were only the first items of mystery. His character was also a matter of concern. He clacked his beak and hissed when anybody came near, disliked being handled by humans, got one with his talons if he could, and generally was a cranky individual. Cluckie fully lived up to a great horned owl’s reputation for being difficult, a textbook case if there ever was one. The problem was, he was not a great horned owl. Cluckie was a barred owl, one of the night flyers known for being cooperative and gentle, the owls who on occasion, according to Hope Swinimer, actually seemed to like interacting with humans.

Added to identity and attitude was the question of what, if anything, was wrong with this bird, because even when experts near and far got involved, things were about as clear as a mud puddle full of raccoon cubs. He was that kind of a rehab case. Nothing was predictable with him, not the beginning, middle, nor most certainly the end of his story.

One of the few things known for sure was that Cluckie arrived on February 17, 2009. He was emaciated, that was obvious, but whether from lack of food or disease was difficult to determine. A quick examination at Hope for Wildlife could find nothing seriously wrong, but it was evident he was not using his legs properly, so Cluckie was sent to the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital and Dr. Barry MacEachern for a more detailed analysis. Again, nothing other than his inefficient leg use was found, and he returned to Seaforth in the hope that rest and food would improve things. But they did not.

“He had definitely had leg problems,” said Allison Dube, coordinator of Hope for Wildlife. “They were sticking out in front of him and he seemed to have very limited use of them. When you put him on the ground to let him walk, he sort of shuffled. He just didn’t have good grasping ability. He could perch, but I don’t think he could hunt very well.”

Leaving the Nest

In a barred owl nest, the largest chick will sometimes get rid of food competition by pushing out the smallest. Parents will attempt to feed it on the ground if it survives the fall. All young are out of the nest before they can fly, using their beaks and talons to pull themselves onto nearby branches. This happens at about four weeks, and at this point they become known as branchers. They fledge in the sixth and seventh weeks, but remain in parental care for at least four months.

Nothing seemed to help, and in a few weeks he was back at the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital. The staffs at both the rehabilitation centre and hospital were totally confounded by what ailed Cluckie, knowing only that it seemed to involve his legs, and even then, they could find the symptoms, but not the cause. Something had happened, something that did not show up in an x-ray. Whatever it was, Dr. MacEachern decided to give this owl of dubious origin, character, and health the full diagnostic package, calling on resources outside of Nova Scotia. A blood sample was sent off to Cornell University and one of North America’s finest ornithological laboratories.

Hope for Wildlife faced crucial decisions with this barred owl, the same ones that had to be made whenever an animal came in. Could his life be saved? If so, would he ever be well enough to be released back to the wild? Was there another way for him to live usefully if he could not be released? It wasn’t often that the organization’s trained staff and local veterinarians were together unable to find answers, but this was one of those times. Calling on Cornell was bringing in the big guns, but they were needed.

Cluckie, pictured here doing defensive beak clacking, simply did not like people. This was unusual for a barred owl.

When the results came back, instead of providing clarity, they only made the situation worse. One test had shown positive for the dreaded West Nile Virus, which could have explained the leg problems. However, a different test for that same ailment on Cluckie’s blood sample was negative. Either way, a mention of West Nile Virus was not a thing to be passed over lightly, even though no birds had tested positive since 2003 in Nova Scotia. It demanded attention.

West Nile Virus became a major concern in Canada around the year 2000 during a worldwide spread of the disease. It had been carried globally by birds, but did not remain solely an avian problem. Mosquitoes fed on bird blood, then bit people and transmitted the virus to them. Death could and did result. For a while, there was rampant fear of an epidemic in humans. The virus entered Canada in 2001 and was found in birds in Nova Scotia in 2002. There were never any cases of human infection in Nova Scotia, and the risk factor here was always considered very low. West Nile fear lasted almost a decade, but gradually faded, and by 2010, dead birds in Nova Scotia were no longer being routinely tested for the virus. If Cluckie were found to have West Nile in 2009 it would have been urgent news, an amazingly important discovery, especially since owls are known to spend their entire lives within a few kilometres of their birth nests.

However, there had been one positive and one negative test on this barred owl. Nothing had been decided, and both the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital and Hope for Wildlife needed to be certain before deciding the owl’s future. Another blood sample was taken and sent to Cornell, and got lost. A third sample was provided, and to everyone’s relief, it tested negative. Officially Cluckie did not have the virus, but the nagging question of why that first test came back positive remained.

There were two schools of thought on West Nile and Cluckie. The first was that he never had it. For that to be true, the first test would have been a mistake, a false positive, a glitch in the system. That sometimes happened and in theory was possible. The second theory, the one Dr. MacEachern favours, was that the owl indeed did have West Nile Virus at one time. Damage had been done, but he had managed to live through the attack and it was almost out of his system when the first test was taken, and completely gone after that.

“We never figured out what was wrong with him. I still think he had West Nile,” MacEachern stated. “I believe it went in, did its job on the nervous system, and then when we tested again, we got a negative test because the virus was gone. They can get over it, but by that time the damage is already done. That’s what I think happened to him, but we’ll never know.”

According to MacEachern, a better picture of West Nile Virus and its possibilities in Nova Scotia might have been available if health officials had focused on owls all along. Instead, because they were preoccupied with other birds, ones like Cluckie may have slipped by unnoticed.

“There were never that many reports around here,” he said. “Owls are supposedly one of the birds of prey that we see West Nile in because of what they eat. They are kind of our sentinels. Everybody was worried about crows and stuff like that, but it should have been owls people were watching.”

Let’s Shoot ‘Em!

In April of 2007, the Bush White House announced a plan to help save the spotted owl by shooting barred owls in the spotted owl’s reserved territories. Those areas are West Coast old growth forest protected from logging, and environmentalists who had fought many battles to save those areas saw the announcement as an attempt to shift the blame for the spotted owl’s decline so that logging could begin again.

In any case, the barred owl in question was again back on a regimen of food, rest, and hope for the best. He was, as Dube put it, “in limbo for a while.” Cluckie became a resident of Hope for Wildlife’s owl attic and over several months showed some improvement. He still could not walk, but had gone from being unable to stand to being able to perch more or less normally.

His wings and flying appeared fine, so out he went to the flight cage, the last step before release. His talons still appeared weak, and the question was whether they were minimally strong enough for him to hunt. If they were, he could be a free bird again. If not, Hope for Wildlife would have to make a decision, the one it was always uncomfortable making. Cluckie, with workers’ fingers crossed, was set free twice. The first time was short lived, but the second in November 2009 lasted several weeks and hopes were high that he was living happily as a wild bird. Then one day in December, Cluckie showed up weak and starving on the rehab centre’s boardwalk. He did not resist when picked up and penned—a bad sign. Swinimer and her staff faced the unpleasant truth that perhaps they had been trying too hard to avoid the obvious, and now stood nose to nose with it.

Cluckie’s new home in Manitoba.

“After that, we knew he just couldn’t be able to hunt,” Swinimer said. “Otherwise he’d be gone. The only reason he was coming back was because of hunger. We had kept him and kept him, hoping that maybe he would get even better, but it was clear it just wasn’t going to get any better than it was.”

When a release failed at Hope for Wildlife, the remaining choices were always simple but unpleasant. The creature could either be used in education or euthanized. Otherwise, the rehabilitation centre would have long ago morphed into a zoo packed with crippled birds and mammals.

“We decided that Cluckie could not be released, but also that he would make a horrible education animal. He really didn’t like us,” Swinimer said.

The dreaded word was sitting there, staring at them. Euthanize. Sometimes it had to be done, but once again Swinimer chose to pursue other options. They had several barred owls still legitimately in rehabilitation that winter, and one more would not break the system. Besides, as long as the bird was alive, there was always hope, no matter how unrealistic.

“We held onto him for the winter because we had a lot of other barred owls. We had space for him, you could say, so we kept him,” Swinimer rationalized.

Five months went by and there was no news on Cluckie. No one expected any. He was on borrowed time, or so most people thought, but then on May 27, Dube sent out a staff memo that included this short item:

The barred owl Cluckie has made the trip to Manitoba! Dr. James Duncan, with the Manitoba Department of Conservation received Cluckie yesterday after a long flight from Halifax. For those who need a refresher, Cluckie is a barred owl that came to us over a year ago. We suspected he might have West Nile Virus, but after several tests and a long wait it was determined that he did not. Still, Cluckie’s legs were not 100% and although a release was attempted, it was unsuccessful. Cluckie was deemed non-releasable and we’re quite certain that he is unable to hunt due his limitations with his legs. Dr. Duncan will be studying Cluckie’s molt patterns and vocalizations to better understand barred owls and try to figure out where they are living in Manitoba and why their numbers are scarce there.

Dube had been working quietly for about two months on a way to save the apparently doomed barred owl. Dr. Jim Duncan, zoologist, one of Canada’s most respected owl experts, and author of Owls of the World, had contacted a number of Canadian rehabilitation centres looking for a non-releasable barred owl to use in his work. Hope Swinimer had received the message and passed it on to Dube, who immediately thought of Cluckie.

“We basically had an owl sitting in our attic that we didn’t know what to do with,” Dube said. “I contacted Jim and we talked. In the end, we decided that Cluckie would be appropriate for his purpose.”

Duncan is internationally known for his twenty-five-year study of Manitoba’s provincial bird, the great grey owl, and as a prolific author. He understood what Cluckie’s situation had been in Seaforth.

Renowned owl expert Dr. James Duncan and the bird he made his life’s work, Manitoba’s great grey owl.

“It’s inevitable that some euthanasia is necessary,” he said, “but when there is an opportunity, is it ever wonderful to work collaboratively and have the good folks at Hope for Wildlife, Allison in particular in this case, be able to respond and help us out. And it’s a commitment. If Cluckie’s going to be helping us, my opinion is that bird has a government pension plan of sorts. As long as I’m alive, it’s going to be well taken care of.”

According to Duncan, exchange efforts such as this should be made more often because “there is a really important role for this unreleasable wildlife, and the opportunity exists to use them.” Being able to “supplement and complement our field research” by examining their own permanent sample of a species has huge benefits.

“I know from my experience that studying wild owls is great, but you often get to hold them in your hands once, maybe twice. So we can learn a lot from having an unreleasable barred owl in captivity.”

Swinimer acknowledged that Cluckie, after all he had been through, appeared to have found a permanent home with a quiet environment and not a lot of disruption. It was just the type of life he needed, “plus he’ll be helping the barred owls in Manitoba, which is really exciting. I think he’ll have a really good home.”

The Language Game

The word owl came to English from Anglo-Saxon, and from there can be traced back to older German sources. In early English, it was oule. The old German word was ule, which became the modern eule. Both languages are thought to have taken their original word from the ancient Germanic uwwalo.

The barred owl is a relative newcomer to Duncan’s province. It is an eastern species, but due perhaps to human change in forest cover, the owl moved west through Ontario and across the prairies in the 1960s. Based on calls heard at night, Duncan and colleagues know “we have a pretty healthy population of barred owls here in Manitoba” but have little detailed knowledge on nesting, habitat, or food. They have fallen behind neighbouring provinces and recently began a study to catch up. There is a sense of urgency, as the barred owl’s move west has put the endangered northern spotted owl at increased risk. Both are creatures of old growth forest, and the more aggressive newcomer is pushing spotted owls out of their territories. They are genetically similar, resulting in some crossbreeding and the creation of what are being called sparred owls or botted owls.

There is also the matter of the interloper’s potential effect on Manitoba’s great grey owls. In his twenty-five years of research, Duncan saw only one case of a female great grey on her nest within the territory of a barred owl.

“I found her dead at the bottom of the nest tree with two talon-sized puncture marks in the back of her head,” he said.

The great grey is slightly larger than the barred, but their talons have about the same span, and a barred owl’s are much thicker and stronger. That means the new arrival can take a much greater variety of prey than the great grey, which catches almost exclusively field mice and shrews.

As Manitoba’s scientists study the barred owl and its new importance in their province, Cluckie will help Duncan and his staff get to know his kind. They plan to record and study his calls, looking at inflections and, perhaps, regional dialect. Duncan hopes to form a molting template so that when a feather of a wild barred owl is found, they can determine the age and time of year when the bird lost it. Most importantly, Cluckie will be there as questions arise in Manitoba about his species, and will be living the good life as a ward of the province. Not bad at all for an owl from Nova Scotia with an indiscernible past, shaky health record, and dubious future back home.