The need to stay around the house over the last year has turned many people into amateur birdwatchers and happily, on Soloy Avenue in New Sudbury, they’ve turned to bird rescuers, too.
Owl rescuers, to be more specific.
Joanne Pendrak-Flesher, a retired Greater Sudbury Police Officer, started noticing a pair of owls nesting in the pine trees that dot the trees in the backyards near her New Sudbury home.
“We started noticing owls in our neighbourhoods last year,” said Pendrak-Flesher. “I never noticed them two years ago, but last year, they had these babies in a tree two doors down from me.”
Pendrak-Flesher said the whole neighbourhood took an interest and checked in on the babies’ progress often. “Everybody was coming around to see them and the babies, and the mom and dad would be in our yard and flying around protecting the babies.”
This year, the same pair returned and had another baby, just one. However, this one was their last.
Pendrak-Flesher was taking her dog for a walk when she heard two pieces of information from her neighbours. One, that the owl mother was found dead on a neighbour’s lawn of unknown causes. And two, that owl’s baby was currently on his own in the grass.
Thankfully, neighbours Shaun and Mike were there. They were protecting the owl baby from an ‘unkindness’ of ravens.
So begets the circle of life, ravens also need to feed their babies.
But not this time. This time, the baby owl would have Sudbury on his team.
Another neighbour’s daughter brought a tupperware container packed with soft cloth and punched with several holes. They needed to attach a lid as the baby owl kept trying to jump and fly, but his rescuers weren’t sure if he was too injured to do so and may make things worse. He wasn’t getting much air, just risking a fall.
“We picked the bird up and put it in the Tupperware bin,” said Pendrak-Fisher. “And then we're all looking at each other like, what do we do now?”
Thanks to her career in law enforcement, Pendrak-Flesher has more than a few contacts for emergency situations. Strangely, her best contact came from an upcoming baby shower.
“One of my best friends, her daughter, on Sunday I was going to her baby shower. Her (her best friend’s daughter) husband's family are avid, avid birders. I thought, if anybody knows how to take care of or what to do with this owl, they're going to know. So we contacted Joyce and Dave Lemon. And they were on it, like white on rice.”
The Lemons picked up the owl and took it to Gloria Morrisette at Turtle Pond Wildlife Rescue in Val Caron. Then, Dave Lemon picked up the little owl again, this time for a 3:00 a.m. journey to Barrie.
The little owl made it all the way to a rescue centre in St. Catherines. He is not only recovering well, but wasn’t injured. He is seven to eight weeks old but underweight, too little to fly.
Pendrak-Flesher said she is not only pleased to have helped, but pleased to have saved an owl, many of which, like the barn owl or short-eared owl, are endangered species in Ontario.
Thanks to neighbours who noticed the natural world around them, tried to make a home in Sudbury for birds to live and also banded together in a time of crisis, there is a little owl who is growing, thriving and one day having a family of its own.
