Bonaparte’s Gull Release

Bonaparte’s Gull Release

Bonaparte’s Gull Release

4 minute read – 

A Bonaparte’s gull was brought into the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve after it was found flightless on the side of the road. The bird has no significant injuries, some feather damage and was likely concussed. A short time in the centre to recover, eat fish and get strong meant a successful release of the animal to Tàa’an Män — Lake Laberge on the traditional territory of the Ta’an Kwach’an Council.

Lindsay Caskenette

Lindsay Caskenette

Manager Visitor Services

Lindsay joined the Wildlife Preserve team March 2014. Originally from Ontario, she came to the Yukon in search of new adventures and new career challenges. Lindsay holds a degree in Environmental Studies with honours from Wilfrid Laurier University and brings with her a strong passion for sharing what nature, animals, and the environment can teach us.

867-456-7400
Lindsay@yukonwildlife.ca

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Faces of the Preserve: Doug

Faces of the Preserve: Doug

Faces of the Preserve: Doug

12 min read –

It takes passion and love for Yukon’s wild spaces and the wildlife that inhabit it, to support the Yukon Wildlife Preserve – a non-profit organization dedicated to the education and protection of Yukon’s natural spaces. 

Meet our Wildlife Interpreter Doug! Here he shares his unique and fascinating life story that led him to not only to the Yukon but eventually to the Wildlife Preserve.

“I was born in Victoria, BC in the mid 50s and am the eldest of four children. Mom said I was born with an extra helping of curiosity. We were the typical nuclear family of the day. Both my parents enjoyed camping and the outdoors, so we did that a lot. I can remember wet, rainy days in a small tent on the beach near Tofino or in one of the provincial parks up island. When I was around seven, we quit the tent and graduated to a small travel trailer for our camping shelter.

We kids explored everything that did not run away as we got closer. Each year we would expand our knowledge of the forest plants and animals, the rocks, waterways and seashore to see what we could collect as we explored and combed the beaches with our shoulders sunburned from squatting in tidal pools observing all the life they contained. Mom was ever diligent to make sure nothing that was dead or could die found its way into the trailer or the back seat of the car. I had to empty my pockets into a plastic pail before I could enter…it was a rule!

One morning, my sister Sharon found a tiny grey kitten snuggled up to the warm rocks of the campfire at Ivy Green Provincial Park. That was the only creature we were ever permitted to take home with us and that cat named Smoky lasted a good long time as I recall, probably because it was spoiled terribly compared to the life of a feral animal trying to make a living in the wilderness.

My siblings and I lived in a time that is far removed from today. Back then flotsam on the beach may have included Japanese fishing floats hand-blown from coarse green glass and wrapped in netting woven from long eel grass. We hunted sand dollars of all colours & sizes (the best ones were at Tribune Bay on Hornby Island), crustacean shells, wave-polished glass and stones, crustaceans and hermit crabs out shopping for a new shell to call home, and the jetsam that washed in on the previous high tides. Each day was fresh and new waiting to be discovered, poked, prodded and inspected.

Flotsam on the beach may have included Japanese fishing floats hand-blown from coarse green glass and wrapped in netting woven from long eel grass

Sometimes we would find something that we had seen in a nature book our paternal grandfather had given as a gift, so returning home the book was found and we would learn more about our latest discovery.  My grandfather was hopeful that we kids would take an interest in the natural world, and he would buy us books to inspire our curiosity to all facets of the earth and all that crawls on it. He gifted us with the complete Time Life series of the natural world and an annual subscription to National Geographic. I still have those books and I will sometimes open one and be transported back to the big green chair in our living room sitting next to my grandfather’s spirit as I re-read the descriptions of animals or the planet and how it all works as a singular complex biological entity. 

My grandfather was a keen and accomplished angler who infected my dad as a kid with the same passion for testing wits with fish. Grandpa and dad passed this affliction to my brothers and I, and we would often be on the Malahat long before the sun came up; my brother Dave and I slept in the back seat while Dad and Uncle John navigated us to that day’s selected fishing spot. The Cowichan, or Englishman’s River, the Oyster and Gold Rivers, Sooke and Campbell River and many others, were flogged with fly patterns and spinners for rainbows, sea-run cutthroat, seasonal salmon and steelhead. Sometimes we drove along an old logging road to get to a special spot my dad fished with grandpa when he was our age.

Doug's First Fish!

My first fish!

My grandfather was a significant contributor to my perspectives today and I often recall his comments from my childhood when I am telling our visitors about the wildlife here at the Preserve. Back then it was called ecology, today it’s called environmentalism. In each time frame it is still a profound love of our world and all the creatures that live with us.”

When I was twelve the family moved to the mainland and we settled in the cattle farming region of south Surrey. I won’t bore you with my teen years, suffice to say I was right and all those who opposed me were not.

After graduating high school at Lord Tweedsmuir High School in Cloverdale, I worked various jobs in the marine sector from maintenance to a deckhand on a salmon trawler to eventually a trained mechanic with the Mercury Marine in Burnaby, B.C.  

“Being a not-so-big-kinda guy I often got the jobs working down in the oily dank and sour bilges and honestly I quickly developed a dislike for that working environment, so I began to learn about navigational gear and other electronics that don’t live in the bilges, rather they cling high up on the masts and elevated superstructures where a skill-testing climb was required. I quit being a bilge rat and became a mast monkey. I spent a few years installing and repairing radio gear, radar systems, and similar equipment in boats, aircraft, cars and trucks.

My mast monkey days!

Time passed and I met and married my wife Chris. In the fall of 1976, I was recruited for a job working as a marine mechanic for the National Geographic’s support depot in Perth, Australia. At the same time my dad had a business venture here in Whitehorse he wanted me to work in. Two job offers: One hot – one cold. My mom ended up making the choice for us as she quite passionately said she was not going to sit on an airplane for 15 bloody hours to visit her grandchildren. We moved to Whitehorse.

For our first two years in the Yukon, I spent working to get my dad’s business up and running, then I worked at Sea-Land Recreational fixing boats until I jumped out of one and injured my knee which would require 8 weeks in a cast. Thus began my four year gig at CKRW as an announcer/operator- a DJ in common terms. I loved that job; playing music and informing the audience of the day’s events. But we had another baby on the way which required more income, so without another job waiting, I quit the radio business in 1984 and looked for new employment opportunities which led me to a different kind of radio business.

Next, I accepted a job with Total North Communications which took me to many remote wilderness locations all across the North as we installed remote communications systems for mining camps, exploration ventures, governments, community radio and TV stations, and mountaintop repeater systems which put us right in the middle of the wilderness.

Repraing the Carcross TV system.

I got paid to travel to exotic remote northern places that people pay dearly to visit and experience. While working in the Kluane National Park area on a mountaintop, young Dall sheep would be sniffing in our toolboxes unafraid as we were quite probably the first humans they had ever seen. We watched from the safety of a helicopter as the namesake grizzly of the Golden Bear Mine south of Atlin tore apart a repeater box we thought would be bear-proof…we were wrong. One trip into the far north we had to land the Twin Otter on the frozen tundra, roll a couple fuel drums off the plane and pump the fuel into the plane as a group of caribou watched from some distance. Then we put everything back into the plane and resumed our travel before it got too dark.

Left to right: Refueling the Carcross TV systems on Caribou Mountain; Repeater cornshell Kluane National Park; Installing a repeater near Kluane Lake. 

This job took me to some awe-inspiring locations, often where humans had not yet made footprints. I met some truly amazing people and had some adventurous experiences, some of which prompted my wife to beg me to quit field work and find something safer. Hard landing a helicopter is not a crash, but she saw things differently than I, so after the third hard landing I gave up field work and moved upstairs into sales and marketing and got fat.

In 1991 I was hired on with the Yukon Government’s Executive Council Office to work in policy and communications and the next 25 years went by in a blur. In 2016, I retired from my formal working career with the government, but I don’t sit still very well and needed something to do.

After a month of completing chores around the house and finishing the ‘honey-do’ list, Up North Adventures called to ask if I would be interested in piloting their rough water support boat used to ferry canoe tour groups through the rough and dangerous waters of Lake Laberge and a few other Yukon water systems. Additionally, I would guide fishing parties in search of our local fish species. Inspired by working in that wilderness setting once again, I thought I was set for the rest of my working days. I had a portable office that met my needs very well.”

My portable office for a few years!

After an injury however, a change of pace was needed.

“I saw the job posting here at the Preserve and I considered this would be a great place to work based on previous visits with my grandchildren, and the lack of heavy lifting suited me as I hoped to grow gracefully into my autumn years.

Doug shares stories with guests about the Arctic Fox.
Photo credit: L.Caskenette

When hired and oriented to my new role as a Wildlife Interpreter it took some time for me to become satisfied with the tour presentation I had created. There is so much to share in just the limited hour and a half of a bus tour. Then one day, my memory took me back to one of those chats with my grandfather explaining the world around us and I then knew what my goal here at the Preserve was and I have been refining my tour presentations ever since. I have a presentation now for each season focusing on what the animals are doing at that time in their lives.

I have made it my mission to try and inspire young people to have the same sense of awe and wonder of our natural world as I did when it was explained to me in ways I understood and appreciated. So that’s my focus today – I want to inspire the next generations to love, understand and admire our natural wilderness and the ecology that makes it work.

Guided bus tours are offered daily at the Preserve. Book online!
Photo credit: L.Caskenette

Getting to know our visitors is another part of the job I love. Our international visitors are often drawn here by the romantic stories of the Gold Rush and other days gone by in the North. Many of them hope to see the iconic animals of our unspoiled paradise and learn more about them. I am happy to report we often make some long-held wishes come true for these people as they see a real live moose, musk ox, or other favourite creature up close for the first time. Many visitors are already awestruck with the Yukon and have questions about living here and enduring the cold winters, viewing the Aurora and how we cope without all the big-city conveniences they are familiar with. Some of our elderly visitors are transported back to the memories of their childhood when indoor plumbing was a luxury few had in their homes, very few owned automobiles and the technologies of today were promoted in Popular Mechanics.”

Northern and Arctic icons, moose and muskox.
Photo credit: L.Caskenette

Over the past five years, Doug has met quite a number of people from different walks of life, but a few occasions have stuck out to him.

“One was in the winter of 2018 when a couple from Barcelona toured the Preserve. They were the only ones on the bus and it was around 20 below and we had stopped at the muskox platform for a closer look. I told them about the animals and their natural environment and answered their questions. The lady walked closer to the fence and Jesse, one of our cow musk oxen slowly walked through the snow towards her and stopped so they were only about ten feet apart, face to face with just the wire fence between them. They remained silently staring at each other this way for a bit of time until we got back on the bus. Seated behind me, I could hear the couple quietly speaking in Spanish with some very impassioned tones until the lady began to cry softly. Later in the tour she came to me and apologised for being so emotional.

She could not explain why she felt the way she did but was grateful she had connected with the musk ox and how it was meaningful for her and she would remember it always.

Face to face with Northern wildlife.
Photo credit: L.Caskenette

During my introductory comments on the bus I want people to relax and enjoy themselves and participate rather than just staring out the windows. So as an icebreaker to promote dialog I often point to one of them and ask “What’s your favourite animal in the whole world?” Some need some time to think about it before answering while others answer almost immediately. I have heard everything from horses, dogs and common pets to tarantulas, anacondas, giraffes and polar bears. Animals they adored as kids still have a special appeal for them. It’s that inner-child I want to connect with and helping them to recall being a kid helps to make that happen more easily. I often see the expression on people’s faces that says, “Ask me next!””

Join Doug for a guided bus tour
Photo credit: L.Caskenette

Doug is one of the integral members of the Yukon Wildlife Preserve and his passion helps to connect visitors to Yukon’s iconic wildlife and the habitat in which they live. Next time you visit, stop in and say hello to Doug or share your own story. 

“I have a wonderful opportunity to help our visitors to better understand and appreciate the natural world around us, how it came to be, how it works and how we can help to ensure it continues as it has for millions of years. Kids are keen to know more and I figure if I can help them to understand Nature better, they’ll be inspired to protect it better than previous generations have. As my grandfather demonstrated to me all those years ago, knowledge of our natural world is key to this success. So, I hope I do as good a job with our visitors as he did with me.”

Stories by Doug Caldwell. Read more from Doug. Photos – Doug Caldwell unless otherwise noted.

Doug Caldwell

Doug Caldwell

Wildlife Interpreter

Doug is one of the Interpretive Wildlife Guides here at the Preserve. An avid angler and hunter he has a broad knowledge of Yukon’s wilderness and the creatures that live here. With a focus on the young visitors to the Preserve, Doug takes the extra time to help our guests to better appreciate the many wonders of the animal kingdom here in the Yukon.

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Those Things On Their Heads – Antlers Vs. Horns

Those Things On Their Heads – Antlers Vs. Horns

Those Things On Their Heads – Antlers Vs. Horns

10 minute read –

In our modern language usage, some terms or words may be incorrectly applied when describing an item. For example: some people do not always distinguish between horns and antlers where they incorrectly refer to all animal headgear as horns. Antlers and horns are very different in a number of ways and these variations are the result of millions of years of evolution and adaptation for the animal species to live a healthy life in the environment they occupy.

Bovids, or members of the horn-bearing group of animals versus cervids, or members of the deer, antler-bearing group of animals. 
Photo left to right:  Mountain goat, bison, moose, caribou. 
Credit: L.Caskenette & J.Paleczny

Headgear has influenced many aspects of some species and how they conduct themselves through the year; including the obvious breeding cycle but also their comfort in the heat of summer and how they communicate and identify themselves visually.

Let’s begin with construction materials: Horns are made from keratin- the same material as your hair and fingernails- whereas antlers are made from bone. Horns are a two-part structure. An interior portion of bone (an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles called keratin.

Horns grow from the base where it attaches to the animal’s skull, antlers grow from the tips. Antlers are grown only by males of the deer species except for Caribou where females grow lightweight antlers, an adaptation for their grazing in snow for lichen. Horns are present on both male and females of most horned species with the males typically having larger horns than the females. 

Bovid family of animals have horns and both females and males with grow these horns. Typically female horn growth is smaller than males. Sexual selection plays a role here for large displays in both horn and antler bearing animals.

Perhaps the greatest difference between horns and antlers is that antlers are shed and regrow each year, where horns are permanent and remain and grow with the animal for all its life, or until they get broken off. Once they are broken, they do not grow back. The animal will carry a damaged or missing horn for the rest of its life.  Antlers also factor into the breeding cycles of the males who employ them to demonstrate their virility and to impress the females.

Antlers too may become broken or removed completely due to carelessness or fighting. These will grow back, but not right away. The animal must wait for the annual antler shed-regrow cycle for that year to conclude, usually in mid-winter before a new antler will form during the next year’s cycle, this may cause the animal to be without an antler for up to a year. 

Horns appear to form earlier than antlers on younger animals such as goats or bison, where Mountain Goat kids will be displaying small pointed black horns within a few short weeks of its birth, while antler buds appear at several months or so after a calf or fawn is born. But once they are in place and growing, they grow quickly.

Left to right: Mountain goat kids show horn formation, easily seen against the white; Watson the moose shows nubs of antlers developing in his first winter of life in 2019. Bison calves also show horn development early on in life. 

Antler is the fastest growing tissue of any mammal on the planet. With a healthy diet and high caloric intake, a moose can put on as much as a pound of antler in a single day. In the scope of just eight months’ growth, moose antler can grow from tiny buds as big as your thumb to gigantic antler racks measuring up to six feet across or 1.8 meters from tip to tip. A large moose’s antlers can weigh up to forty pounds or nearly 20 kilograms on average. Some very large moose antlers may weigh up to 75 pounds or 35 kilograms.

Credit Alaska News Source

Source credit: Alaska News Source

Back to construction for a moment; another key difference between horned and antlered animals is how the physiology of horns and antlers differ.

Horns have a central, conical bony core or cornual process that grows out from the frontal bone of the skull. On close examination of a horn you will see what appears to be layers of horn material (keratin) growing a new layer at the base which will grow longer over time and become thicker with subsequent new layers of keratin forming as the animal ages.

After 6 months of age, the bone becomes hollow and the space within it is continuous with the frontal sinuses. The surface of the bone is rigid and porous and is covered with an internal surface which keratinizes and forms the protective covering of the horn. The new horn produced at the base is soft and often transparent giving the horn a glossy appearance. Horn growth function is similar to how the cuticle on your fingers and toes produce the nails.

Source credit: Talmudology

Antlers however attach to the animal’s skull between the eye and ear at a place called the pedicel where they will grow to full size for that year over about eight to ten months. The antlers separate from the skull at the point of attachment, the pedicel.

Antlers separate from the skull at the pedicel, typically in the winter months.

The antler side is called the corona and forms a bone to bone connection with the pedicel on the skull that is remarkably strong until the its time to shed that year’s antlers. There is a chemical influence when the animal’s hormones change following the rut and seasonal progress that causes the bone between the corona and the pedicel to dissolve where eventually it weakens enough that the skull can no longer support the weight of the antler and it falls off. Both antlers may fall off at the same time, but it is common for both antlers to fall off over a couple of days.

Horns are mostly hollow, white antlers are made up of less dense, sponge-like bone called the trabecular that has been highly vascularized during formation allowing blood to flow to the tips of the antlers to facilitate their growth. Antlers require blood to grow while horns do not.

While antlers are covered in velvet, they are also engorged with blood which provides another important benefit besides growing the antler. As animals do not perspire or sweat in any way, they must expel excessive body heat by panting as many animals do. Antlers perform like radiators where body heat is expelled by the blood-filled antlers.

Ears of most deer species shed the fur and hair off them in the warmer months so they too can dissipate body heat. If they would let you, you could take the pulse of an antlered animal by finding a blood vessel on their fuzzy antler and placing your fingers on it to feel the beat of his heart. Don’t try this at home…or anywhere else.

Both horns and antlers have also been used by people since prehistoric times for tools of various kinds.   The hollow nature of horns has made them desirable for spoons, scoops and hand shovels or scrapers while the strength and hardness of antlers has often found them to be the material of choice for making hunting points for spears and arrow heads. Antler has also been a popular material for handles of tools like knives and axes.

Creativity and need, guided the early peoples to adapt and modify both horns and antlers for a wide variety of tools and other purposes to better their quality of life. They have often been used to make buttons for clothing or ornamentation. Antlers have been carved into needles for sewing of clothes, shelter and similar products, Horns were popular as gun powder containers as they would prevent the powder from getting wet and were easy to carry and measure the appropriate amount of powder into the firearm.

Yukon art Hints of Easter by Faye Chamberlain, 2021. Yukon Permanent Art Collection.

Both antlers and horns provide important functions for the animals that grow them so they may live healthy, secure lives. Their headgear has also influenced many of their social behaviors that have developed and evolved over the centuries. These include mating rituals and protective activities against potential predators.

Most of us have seen sheep rams rearing up on their hind legs and pounding their horns against another ram in courtship competitions, but they may use their horns to communicate in less violent ways. Rams may interlace their horns and gently rub ear to ear as a form of communication that we can only guess what it means.

Antlered animals also employ their antlers as a means to communicate for example when two young bulls will use their antlers to joust or push each other around like a game of reverse tug o war.

Antlers are also a means of displaying size and age which will determine their social order of who is dominant and who is subordinate. From a distance the size of the antler rack quickly displays the animal’s placement in the local social order, typically around the breeding season or rut when many male moose may gather in an area for an opportunity to breed with cow moose drawn to the area by pheromones carried in the wind.

Bulls with smaller antlers will size each other up based on their antler racks and determine their chances of winning a fight with a larger bull.

Animal headgear serves a number of important benefits for the creatures that grew them. Humans have also found inventive and beneficial uses for both antlers and horns once the animals are finished using them. Humans often use antlers and horns for tools, but they can also be transformed into wonderful works of art. Nature provides.

Doug Caldwell

Doug Caldwell

Wildlife Interpreter

Doug is one of the Interpretive Wildlife Guides here at the Preserve. An avid angler and hunter he has a broad knowledge of Yukon’s wilderness and the creatures that live here. With a focus on the young visitors to the Preserve, Doug takes the extra time to help our guests to better appreciate the many wonders of the animal kingdom here in the Yukon.

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Muskox – I’m a Survivor!

Muskox – I’m a Survivor!

Muskox – I’m a Survivor!

4 minute read – 

The muskox is an adaptable animal. In the face of climate change a generalist diet with a slow metabolism helped this species survive through the last ice age and to today while other megafauna, like woolly mammoths, went extinct.

During Beringia there were two types of muskox present on the extensive grassland biome – Ovibos moschatus, the tundra muskox that roams today, and Bootherium bombifrons, the helmeted muskox. 

The helmeted muskox did not survive the Pleistocene even though it was endemic to North America and had a wider range than its relative, the tundra muskox. If you could imagine this Beringian muskox was taller and more slender than those of the living tundra muskox and its wider range spanned an area from Texas all the way to Alaska. Like many of the horn and antler bearing animals of this era it was all about BIG, oversized, dramatic displays for sexual selection. The helmeted muskox had longer deeper skulls that supported higher and more flaring horns than the tundra muskox. But, size didn’t get selected as most important for survival in this dramatically changing and climatically unstable landscape. It seems not only was smaller horns preferred through evolution but overall body size too – the less compact nature of this muskox might have played a role in its extinction along with many other large herbivorous mammals of its’ time.  

The tundra muskox crossed the Bering land bridge from Eurasia into North America about 100,000 years ago. A more focused range and smaller size as well as thicker coat than that of the Bootherium, the Ovibos remains a resident of the Arctic landscape to this day. What’s pretty incredible is that these muskox have changed, genetically, very little since their days on the Mammoth Steppe. The muskox of today’s Arctic Archipelago are however much less genetically diverse than those that lived during the last Ice Age which suggests they were not completely unscathed during this time of climatic instability. Significant population and geographical range shrinkage restricted the tundra muskox to Greenland and much of the western Northern American Arctic populations are reintroductions from those limited genetics. The two types of muskox of the late Pleistocene did not mix genetically and the reduction of both species, including the extinction of the helmeted muskox, seem to exclude humans as a driving force behind these population dynamics into the Holocene.

Ovibos moschatus, the tundra muskox, was able to ride the waves of climate change over tens of thousands of years. Their adaptability to variability, including climate and thus vegetation quantity and quality, fostered this large Ice Age mammal to survive a formidable narrow niche of the Arctic biome to present day. What might the future hold for the muskox?

Photo credit L. Caskenette

Resources:

Thanks to Dr. Grant Zazula for taking the time share incredible insights into the past, into Beringia with the YWP crew! 

Ancient DNA analyses exclude humans as the driving force behind late Pleistocene musk ox (Ovibos moschatus) population dynamics. Paula F. Camposa, Eske Willersleva, Andrei Sherb, Ludovic Orlandoc, Erik Axelssona, Alexei Tikhonovd, Kim Aaris-Sørensena, Alex D. Greenwoode, Ralf-Dietrich Kahlkef, Pavel Kosintsevg, Tatiana Krakhmalnayah, Tatyana Kuznetsovai, Philippe Lemeyj, Ross MacPheek, Christopher A. Norrisl, Kieran Shepherdm, Marc A. Suchardn, Grant D. Zazulao, Beth Shapirop, and M. Thomas P. Gilberta.

Musk ox (Ovibos moschatus) of the mammoth steppe: tracing palaeodietary and palaeoenvironmental changes over the last 50,000 years using carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis Maanasa Raghavan,, Gonçalo Espregueira Themudo, Colin I. Smith, Grant Zazula, Paula F. Campos

Tundra Muskox

Helemeted Muskox

Lindsay Caskenette

Lindsay Caskenette

Manager Visitor Services

Lindsay joined the Wildlife Preserve team March 2014. Originally from Ontario, she came to the Yukon in search of new adventures and new career challenges. Lindsay holds a degree in Environmental Studies with honours from Wilfrid Laurier University and brings with her a strong passion for sharing what nature, animals, and the environment can teach us.

867-456-7400
Lindsay@yukonwildlife.ca

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I Wish I Was as Tough as a Chickadee!

I Wish I Was as Tough as a Chickadee!

I Wish I Was as Tough as a Chickadee!

6 minute read – Banner image photo credit: Syd Cannings, iNaturalist

Gram for gram, there are few creatures in the North that have the endurance, temerity and constitution equal to a Boreal Chickadee. An iconic small bird of the north, this species lives its entire life in the Boreal forest and does not migrate to warmer southern climates in the winter months. Chickadees have adapted to not only survive, but to thrive in harsh winter conditions known across this northern biome.

For hundreds of thousands of years Boreal Chickadees, a cousin of the Black-capped varieties, has called the upper lands of North America home. It is believed to have crossed the Bering land bridge from present-day Russia into North America, very much like the first humans and many animal species to arrive in the Americas.

A secret to the Chickadee’s success is its work ethic where much of the summer is spent gathering and storing food, in the form of insects and their larva; seeds of many varieties and fat often gathered from animal carcases killed by much larger predators. Chickadees are frequent participants in cleaning up the remains of other animals as they can eat and digest just about anything organic.

They cache their winter larder in the bark and crevasses of trees, in tree cavities and roots, rock faces and structures. They demonstrate a very reliable memory for where they hid these morsels as some weeks later they return and consume them, often retrieved from beneath snow cover.1https://www.hww.ca/en/wildlife/birds/chickadee.html

A very social bird, the Boreal Chickadee is often found in the company of its cousins the Black-capped variety, Nuthatches, Pine Siskins, Red Polls, Kinglets and other regular visitors to bird feeders in the back yard. Their cheerful call is very recognizable and can often be heard following an insect hatch when their food gathering activities stimulate greater activity.

It is believed that Boreal Chickadees mate for life with the pair remaining together all year. The nest site is often a hole in a tree, either a natural cavity or old woodpecker hole; chickadees may also excavate their own site or enlarge an existing hole. The nest site is usually low, within twelve feet above the ground. Both male and female help with excavation, but only the female builds the nest inside. Nest has a foundation of moss, bark strips, lichens, topped with: feathers, plant seed fluff and the fur and hair shed by local animals. In human occupied locations, nests have been found to contain clothes dryer lint, threads and strings and similar items useful for the purpose.

This is a Boreal Chickadee’s cousin, the Blackcapped Chickadee making a nest in the spring of 2020. Watch the Wild Spring Adventures video for the action of this busy bird and other spring happenings at the Preserve. 

After breeding, the hen will lay up to nine eggs in a single clutch. These are white, with fine reddish brown dots often concentrated at the egg’s larger end. Only the female sits to incubate the eggs which take between ten and fifteen days to hatch. The male captures food and brings it to the brooding female during incubation. The female stays with the young and broods them much of the time at first, while the male continues to bring food. Growing quickly and developing flight feathers within a week of hatching, the young leave nest at about 20 days.

As summer concludes and the fall winds blow through the trees, Chickadees put on fresh, heavier plumage. And their feathers are more dense than most birds’, creating a comfy down parka for the chickadee. And most impressive, the chickadees adapt to deep cold by lowering their body temperature at night from 42 degrees Celsius to just 29.5 degrees. In this way, the birds conserve their stores of insulating fat as their metabolism slows. They fluff their feathers up so they truly look like little balls of fluff capturing more body heat within the airspace created within their feathery parka.

An average Boreal Chickadee weighs only a third of an ounce and its body size – without all the fluffy feathers – is about as big as an adult human’s thumb. It truly is remarkable how a creature this small and delicate can endure the harsh frigid cold of a six-month Yukon winter.

Each year the local Yukon Bird Club does several outtings and observations including a the winter seasonal Christmas Bird Count across the Territory – several variety of chickadee are noted to withstand Yukon winters! It’s an excellent citizen science engagement that contributes to a North American wide bird monitoring and conservation program. The Preserve boasts an array of species for bird lovers year-round but especially in Spring migration and throughout summer.

Annual Spring bird walk at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve.
Photo Credit: Jake Paleczny. 

Doug Caldwell

Doug Caldwell

Wildlife Interpreter

Doug is one of the Interpretive Wildlife Guides here at the Preserve. An avid angler and hunter he has a broad knowledge of Yukon’s wilderness and the creatures that live here. With a focus on the young visitors to the Preserve, Doug takes the extra time to help our guests to better appreciate the many wonders of the animal kingdom here in the Yukon.

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