Take Action Burlington

Every year, the International Day for Biological Diversity is celebrated on May 22 to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. In 2024, Nature Canada chose May 22 to announce the City of Burlington’s Bird Friendly City Certification renewal at the Intermediate level.

As noted in a previous Take Action Burlington post, the City first achieved its Bird Friendly City Certification in 2022 working alongside Bird Friendly Hamilton Burlington to advance bird-friendly practices and policies including:

• Educating cat owners about the impacts of outdoor cats on birds,
• Promoting Lights Out practices during migration,
• Installing bird-friendly glass at new community centres while also encouraging the public to treat their own windows, and
• Officially declaring the Trumpeter Swan as Burlington’s Official City Bird!

Take Action Burlington!

We can all play a part in taking action for birds and helping our community maintain its BFC designation. As Dave Tourchin, co-chair of Bird Friendly Hamilton Burlington (BFHB), states, “Nature Canada’s BFC scoring system is quite comprehensive, with 25 categories that need to be satisfied when we submit the renewal applications on behalf of Burlington every two years. There are some specific areas we could use more help with from the public, in addition to keeping up all those great practices that help birds.” Below are some of Dave’s suggestions.

Tips for Educators

Section 3.1(c) of the BFC program asks for “at least one school that does a specific bird-related program such as Christmas bird count for kids, School Yard Bird Blitz, Global Bird Rescue, or incorporating curriculum-based lessons from Keep cats safe and save bird lives. If your school already does one of these activities or a similar bird program, reach out to BFHB to let them know about it. If you’re interested in learning more about these programs, check out BFHB’s Resources for Educators webpage.

Tips for Businesses

If you have a business in Burlington that sells products that are friendly to birds and implements bird-friendly practices at the workplace, consider letting BFHB know about it. If not, consider taking such action to help meet section 3.6 of the BFC program (Local Bird Friendly Businesses). Example actions include:

Selling:

• Certified Bird Friendly Coffee,
• Bird feeders or nest boxes,
• Effective bird-friendly window treatment kits, or
• Products or services that avoid harm to birds in their manufacture, distribution, or end-use (e.g. organic produce).

AND implementing bird friendly practices such as:

• Treating your windows,
• Providing Bird Friendly Coffee for employees,
• Planting a bird or pollinator garden,
• Installing and maintaining feeders or nest boxes,
• Reducing single-use plastics,
• Avoiding pesticide or rodenticide use, or
• Volunteering with local habitat restoration projects.

Treat windows and glass railings

Treat windows and glass railings using effective bird-collision deterrent methods. BFHB maintains a record of the number of known buildings in the city that have proper bird-friendly glass, to meet BFC scoring section 1.2(d). It’s important that Burlington demonstrate annual progress in this area. If you’ve treated your glass at home, work or elsewhere – even if only one window – consider contacting BFHB to let them know about it. (Please note that one or two bird silhouette decals on a window is not considered to be effective enough. See the link above for acceptable methods).

Lights Out

Turn off non-essential lighting at night during spring and fall migration, close curtains and blinds (residential, workplaces, schools, institutions), and avoid use of uplighting. Outdoor lighting should have cut-off shields that prevent light being projected above the horizontal plane (refer to the City of Burlington’s Outdoor Lighting Guidelines).

Keep cats indoors and dogs on a leash

Do not allow pets to roam at-large off your property or in public spaces, in accordance with the City of Burlington’s Animal Control Bylaw. Keeping cats indoors helps keep birds and cats safe. Keeping dogs on a leash reduces disturbance of ground-nesting and ground-foraging birds, including the Species at Risk we have here in Burlington.

Feral cats

If you or your group works with feral cats in Burlington, the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA has TNVR (trapping humanely, neutering/spaying, vaccinating, and returning healthy community cats to their outdoor homes) resources that may be able to assist you. BFHB has a shared interest in humanely keeping feral cat populations under control, for the benefit of both cats and birds. Feral cats have hard lives, and they have a detrimental effect on biodiversity. The Bird Friendly City program requires “evidence of active, municipal-wide strategies and actions that demonstrate progress on reducing the population of unowned cats.”  Consider reaching out to BFHB to let them know about your work with feral cats.

Take Action Burlington! Let’s do what we can to protect our feathered friends. Collectively we can make a difference.

This post was provided by Dave Tourchin, co-chair of Bird Friendly Hamilton Burlington.