Bird-Friendly City

• The northern cardinal is a striking and familiar backyard bird throughout most of eastern North America, including Kingston, where it is a frequent flier in many parts of the city. 
• Male cardinals are brilliant red all over, with a reddish bill and black face immediately around the bill. Females are pale brown overall with warm reddish tinges in the wings, tail, and crest. They have the same black face and red-orange bill. 
• The cardinal is a fairly large, long-tailed songbird with a short, very thick bill and a prominent crest. Cardinals often sit with a hunched-over posture and with the tail pointed straight down. Look for them in parks, urban forests, backyards and areas with low, dense cover. 
• Cardinals don’t migrate and they don’t molt into a dull plumage, so they’re still breathtaking in winter’s snowy backyards. They are usually seen in pairs or small groups near dense cover, especially thickets near forest edges, and frequently visit bird feeders. Listen for high-pitched metallic chips and series of loud, sweet whistles. Only a few female North American songbirds sing, including the northern cardinal.

Cardinals in Kingston  

• Behavior: Cardinals are active, especially during the winter. They are year-round residents and do not migrate.  Northern cardinals tend to sit low in shrubs and trees or forage on or near the ground, often in pairs. They are common at bird feeders but may be inconspicuous away from them. 
• Appearance: Look for brilliant red males and paler brown females, both with a distinctive crest on their heads. Cardinals can often be spotted even in poor conditions because of their bright colour. 
• Habitat: They are frequently found in suburban areas, backyard feeders, and gardens. Cardinals are often spotted in parks with dense shrubs and trees, where they can find cover and food.  

• Large populations of crows are a prominent feature of Kingston's urban landscape, especially during the fall and winter. 
• The crow is a large, long-legged, thick-necked bird with a heavy, straight bill. In flight, the wings are fairly broad and rounded with the wingtip feathers spread like fingers. The short tail is rounded or squared off at the end. 
• Crows are very social, sometimes forming flocks in the thousands. Inquisitive and sometimes mischievous, crows are good learners and problem-solvers, often raiding garbage cans and picking over discarded food containers.  
• American Crows are common birds of fields, open woodlands, and forests. They thrive around people, and you’ll often find them in agricultural fields, lawns, parking lots, athletic fields, roadsides, towns, and city garbage dumps. 
• Thousands of crows commute into Kingston nightly to sleep in large, communal roosts, a phenomenon that has garnered significant local interest. Crow populations in the city began booming in the past several years. They are found in many parts of the city at different parts of the day and season.   

Crows in Kingston  

• Winter roosts: Beginning in the fall, crows from the surrounding countryside fly into the city to form large, communal roosts for the winter. These roosts can contain thousands of birds and are a spectacular sight for observers. 
• Urban warmth and light: Crows choose urban areas like Kingston for winter roosting because cities are warmer than rural areas due to the "urban heat island" effect. The ample streetlights also provide security against predators like the Great Horned Owl. 
• Daytime foraging: While they roost in the city at night, the crows disperse at dawn into smaller family groups to forage in agricultural land and other areas during the day. 
• Seasonal dispersal: By the spring, the adult crows leave the large urban roosts to find mates and spread out into the countryside to nest. However, groups of juvenile crows, which do not breed in their first year, may continue to form smaller roosts in the city.   

As a cat owner, the responsibility to keep cats and wildlife separate and ensuring the safety of both starts with you.

Outdoor cats, including feral cats, are contributing to large scale declines of bird populations. It is estimated that cats annually kill 100-350 million birds in Canada alone. Cats are skilled natural hunters and can have a devastating impact on local wildlife populations. 

Keep cats indoors or in an enclosed outdoor space, such as a catio, for both the safety of birds and cats. In Kingston, cats must be registered with the City, and owners are responsible for ensuring they are kept on their property or under control at all times. 

Learn more tips on keeping your cats indoors to reduce the impact they have on native wildlife on the Nature Canada’s Cats and Birds document.

Each year in Canada, it’s estimated that around 25 million migratory birds die as a direct result of collisions with buildings. Experts only expect that number to grow unless we all work together to help mitigate local biodiversity loss through urban development that considers wildlife species. 

During the day, reflected light poses a severe threat to birds. Birds can see through glass and what is reflected on glass, but they cannot see the glass itself. Attracted to the reflection of a landscape that is actually behind them, or to a plant that is on the other side of a window, many birds fly straight into windows and reflective building exteriors. 

Unintentional vehicle collisions with bird nests are also a cause of mortality for birds. 

Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada is a registered Canadian charity widely recognized as the pre-eminent authority on the bird-building collision issue. They offer many tips for reducing bird collisions, including applying visual markers to or in front of glass to help make windows visible to birds. 

Residents can contribute to research on window collisions by using the Global Bird Collision Mapper, a web app for reporting and viewing the locations of bird collisions with buildings across the globe. 

At night, artificial light from our buildings and cityscapes endangers birds. Many species of birds migrate at night, using light from the moon, the stars, and the setting sun to navigate. The bright lights of urban areas confuse these birds and pull them off their path and into harm’s way. 

On foggy or rainy nights when the cloud cover is low, birds fly at lower altitudes and are more likely to be disoriented by city lights. They may be pulled down into downtown mazes, where they often collide with buildings. 

You can reduce the risk of collision by turning off non-essential lighting and closing curtains at night. Check that no outdoor lights project upwards into the sky and consider installing sensors on lighting to ensure lights aren’t left on all night. Find out more about why birds hit buildings. 

Habitat loss and disturbance has affected most bird species in recent decades. Some of the main drivers include land use changes, infrastructure development and agricultural activity. 

Habitat loss includes both degradation and fragmentation. Degradation is when a space becomes unavailable, such as off-road vehicle use through a habitat, while fragmentation is the breaking up of large patches of land into smaller areas that are unsuitable for some species.