Alberta has the bighorn sheep. Manitoba has the plains bison. Yukon has the raven. So what’s Ontario’s official animal?
We don’t have one — yet.
The loon is our official bird, but we can’t help but think that Ontario’s other furry and feathery (and slippery and leathery) denizens haven’t been given a chance to compete.
That’s why, over the next eight weeks, TVO.org will be giving 16 Ontario animals their turn in the spotlight. You’ll learn about how they live, what threats they’re facing, and how they reflect the province’s character. At the end of the series, you’ll get the chance to make your voice heard — and to vote for your favourite critter.
The winner may not end up on a flag or a coat of arms. But they’ll get a fancy title: Ontario’s unofficial official animal.
Coloured figures of the birds of the British Islands. v.1, 1885-1897. (Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr)
Species/scientific name: Falco peregrinus
Adult size/weight: Peregrines have a wingspan of about one metre. Females can be up to about 60 centimentres long and weigh about 900 grams. Males are up to about 50 centimetres long and weigh about 570 grams.
Longevity: Peregrines live about 15 years, but 70 per cent of peregrine chicks do not live more than a year. Peregrines became sexually mature at about two years.
Feeding and diet: Peregrines in southern Canada typically eat birds that live in wetlands and will eat pigeons, too
Predators: Peregrines are at the top of the food chain
Threats: Habitat loss, pesticides and other environmental contaminants, harvesting for falconry
Habitat: Peregrines have adapted for nesting on steep cliffs and hunting out in the open. Some peregrines have adapted to urban living, nesting on tall buildings in urban centres. They can also nest in quarries or mines.
Range: Peregrine falcons live on every continent except Antarctica. In Ontario, they live across the province, in urban and rural areas south of the tree line. Most live on the north shore of Lake Superior.
Conservation status in Ontario: Peregrines are a species of special concern in Ontario. This means that the bird lives in the wild and isn’t threatened but could be at risk of becoming endangered. It was previously, endangered due to the use of DDT pesticides. The recovery is attributed to the 1970s DDT ban and falcon-watch programs.
(Justin Chandler)
Anne Bell saw her first peregrine falcon in 1991 on a school trip to Mexico. She’d been birding in Ontario but had never seen one in the province. “It’s probably not surprising that, during the 1980s, when I was starting to birdwatch, I’d never seen a peregrine falcon,” says Bell, the director of conservation and education at Ontario Nature. That’s because the species had died off in Ontario due to pesticides in the food chain.
But the falcon’s fortunes changed: a ban on DDT pesticides, plus government- and community-led conservation efforts, brought it back to Ontario, where it is now considered a species of special concern.
In 1996, Bell started participating in the annual Hawk Watch in Toronto’s High Park. “Every year since I started participating in that … I’ve seen peregrine falcons.” She describes each sighting as “a special event” because even though the peregrine lives on every continent but Antarctica, it’s relatively rare. “The size of the bird and the way it looks through the sky with its pointy wings is exciting in and of itself. Even if I saw more of them, I’m sure I would still be excited.”
From left to right: Anne Bell, Ontario Nature’s director of conservation and education (Courtesy of Anne Bell); Leah Schwenger and Pat Baker lead Hamilton’s Falcon Watch (Justin Chandler); Hamilton Falcon Watch’s Sara Shwadchuck (Courtesy of Sara Shwadchuck)
Bell notes that she’s never seen the famous peregrine stoop, in which the raptor divebombs its prey at speeds that can reach 300 kilometres per hour. She says her husband once witnessed the manoeuvre from inside a Toronto office tower. The result was a dead pigeon and “clouds of feathers everywhere.”
Office towers and similar tall buildings have become good nesting locations for peregrines in recent decades, as they mimic the steep cliffs near bodies of water that the birds nest on in the wild. Although urban areas have more obstacles for falcons to fly into, and there’s the added danger of traffic should they land in the wrong spot, many urban falcons are protected by community falcon watches.
Wild Fact: The peregrine falcon can dive at speeds of around 300 kilometres per hour in what’s called a stoop, knocking prey out of the air. This makes it the fastest thing alive.
Around the same time Bell saw her first Ontario peregrine, a Hamilton school-board employee noticed one outside his downtown office building. Community members found a pair nesting on the Sheraton Hotel, and since then, Hamilton Falcon Watch has tracked the birds’ movements, banded chicks born at that nest, and rescued injured falcons. Steeltown’s Leah Schwenger, a teacher at the time, recalls going to stand in a parking lot to watch the nest: “Somebody went by and said, ‘What are you looking at — Elvis?’ I said, ‘No, I’m looking for falcons.’ And the guy said, ‘Yeah, right.’ So I thought I’d better leave before I was arrested for being a peeping Tom.” After Schwenger retired in 2011, she started volunteering for the Falcon Watch.
“If it hadn’t been for the community volunteer efforts, we wouldn’t have seen the recovery that we’ve seen,” Bell says. Urban peregrines populations have bred quite successfully, by some accounts outpacing their rural counterparts. According to Hamilton Falcon Watch, it has overseen the fledging of over 60 chicks and conducted about one rescue per year.
How the fastest animal on Earth attacks its prey
Schwenger helped rescue one of this year’s fledglings, Auchmar, twice. “It was nerve-wracking but pretty darn thrilling to pick her up on the street with a large crowd gathering around and get her into one of our rescue boxes.”
One of Schwenger’s favourite things about peregrines is their parenting skills. She says McKeever and Judson, the current nesting pair on the Sheraton — first-time parents, to her knowledge — were there to look after their chicks at every moment. “We’ve seen them drive off other birds in the area, such as turkey vultures or a bald eagle … Just any sort of a threat to their chicks, and they’re there.”
She also recalls a non-confrontational experience between one falcon and a bald eagle in which the former was flying around the latter, seemingly trying to play.
(Cathy Greenwell/Ontario Nature)
Hamilton Falcon Watch’s Sara Shwadchuck, author of a picture book called Lily of the City about a falcon who nested at the Sheraton for seven years, says, “We almost lost [peregrine falcons]. We have another chance, and we need to do better as humans.”
Ontario’s “special concern” status for peregrines means they could become endangered again. “One of the challenges that we face in the conservation space is that often the policy environment is not conducive to making progress,” Bell says. “If we know there’s something in particular that threatens a species, we need policy-makers to listen to the science and address those threats.” She says banning DDT was good policy but that governments have not quickly addressed new fears over chemicals such as neonicotinoids or flame retardants (which have shown up in peregrine eggs) moving up food chains.
Hinterland Who's Who: The peregrine falcon
In addition to action here, Bell says humans can better coexist with peregrines by joining or supporting community falcon watches, reporting sightings to scientists through apps such as iNaturalist, and reporting injured birds to wildlife-rehabilitation centres.
Bell says the comeback peregrines have made is one big reason they deserve to be Ontario’s unofficial official animal: “Peregrines symbolize the hope, resilience, and positive impact of conservation efforts in a way that few other species do. When governments are willing to respond to the science and when communities are willing to step in and do what they can, we can make things happen. We can bring species back from the brink of extinction, which was the case for the peregrine.”
This series is produced with the assistance of Ontario Nature.