STORIES

Thursday, May 17, 2007

A barred owl poaches from the Millstone River smolt fence

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By Charles Thirkill

Community: Vancouver Island

For the last five years we have built and operated a smolt fence on the Millstone River in Nanaimo, with high school students doing the work. It has been a fun project and we have had lots of help from the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) and local businesses with funding.

Over 100 people have worked on the fence, some for three years in a row. The Career Services teachers in all seven high schools in the Nanaimo/Ladysmith District recruited students who received Work Experience credits.

A typical day took about two hours to sweep the fence, to count and identify the fish, sampling about 50 per day for length and weight. Several of the students have gone on to Malaspina College to study fisheries and aquaculture and are now working as fisheries biologists.

A constant companion for those of us working on the project was a Barred owl who watched the operations from a bough overhanging the creek. By and by the owl became more familiar with us. He would sometimes swoop down and take a dead fish off the fence, flying back to the bough to tear it apart. Last year the owl became one of the crew.

One day as we were sampling. The owl swooped down from the perch and landed on the recovery bucket, at arm’s length from the student who was sampling that day. The student, Jimmy McMunn from Dover Bay Secondary, was taken aback but kept working. I was speechless. The owl was the only member of the crew who knew what he was doing for a while. He just perched on the lip of the recovery bucket trying to figure out if he could catch a Coho smolt. We couldn’t let him take our salmon, but we did sacrifice a Pumpkinseed in the interests of science. Hey, an owl has to eat, too.

A feather was hanging loose on the owl’s breast. I slowly reached out and teased that feather from the plumage. It was a precious moment I will never forget.

After that the owl would regularly land on the sampling table while we cleaned the fence. He even came down one day to show us how he took a bath. It was uncanny to see a bird become so acclimated to people, but we did not try to feed the bird again.

Today, I remember the wise owl. He watched us for four years, and has probably passed on now. We haven’t seen him this year at all, but his progeny are still perched on the boughs over the Millstone River.

Last year when we held an Open House in Bowen Park, one of the owls came by to see what was happening. I wanted to tell him that our smolt fence worked so well that a fish bypass is being built in Bowen Park this year, to allow Coho adults up the river to spawn. It is the culmination of 25 years of work on the river, and it is the centennial project for the Nanaimo Fish and Game Club. When the channel is opened this fall, there will be more than a few happy tears shed in the park I can tell you. Someone should write a song; call it “Cry Me a River—of Joy.”

I guess the owl will know when he sees the smolts coming through next year. Maybe he will be as happy as we will. He will get his share of fish and I still have the feather. It is a fair trade.

This is a great country to live and dream in. Salmon are a part of that dream. Let’s keep the dream alive.