Window crashes, also known as bird strikes, kill millions of birdswith *every* migration.You might not think it happens to your windows, but it does, and you’re not there to witness it. But we can stop it entirely.
I was in Toronto this week. The Corktown Common park was a joy to visit. It has a constructed wetland that they seeded well with native species. It has reeds, duckweed, and native water fleur-de-lys, making it a wonderful habitat for birds. I only wish it were larger, but that it is so accessible to wandering humans means they have a chance to see nature they won’t otherwise see. It whets the appetite for the real thing!
On the walk to the park, we also saw a lone swan nesting, or resting, by the viaduct. It was strange to see that in a “no-man’s-land” off the eastern part of downtown, but as always, it was welcome. I also saw a red-wing blackbird feeding his nestlings. Or, more like, I saw him arrive with food, heard the cacophony of chirps, and then saw him fly off to get more.
There’s a newly constructed glass building in the new West Don Lands area that used bird-friendly glass, with dots impregnated into the glass every 8-10 cm (ideally, though, it should be every 5 cm). Birds need to see that the reflective glass is not “air to fly through,” so interruptions or obstructions in the reflected light are necessary.
Toronto is in the middle of a flyway. Though we need to carry out bird-friendly design (and leaving some places alone to be wild) everywhere, Toronto recognizes its problem, and since 2010, Toronto has mandated bird-friendly glass on all new construction. The official design guidelines are here.
A chimney swift is a bird, an aerial insectivore that consumes more than 1000 insects per day. It roosts in brick-laid chimneys. It is not a dusty child from a Charles Dickens novel!
There are many chimney swifts in Côte-des-Neiges and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce — you can see their aerial acrobatics and hear their calls on most late afternoons in summer. I know a wildlife technical teacher who lives on the fourth floor of an apartment building on the edge of Côte-des-Neiges. A chimney swift swooped in through her balcony door, which she caught in her kitchen. Here it is:
“Can an urban homestead work in Montreal?” This was the query of someone who found my blog once upon a time. “Yes, of course.”
But. (There’s always a qualifier!) You need to have sun, and then you need to have space. If you don’t have sun, you can’t do it (unless you go to step #2, community group part, and then it’s a garden, not a homestead, but that’s OK).
If you have sun and space, then the only thing you need (other than water), is to be ready and willing to put up with the learning curve and the occasional need for help on any of the following things:
1.Start your seedlings indoors in March (some as early as February). That means now! Many require eight weeks before planting.
Don’t you just love lounging (or curling up) by the fire on a cold winter’s eve? Lord knows, I do — just as much as in summer, because I love camping! So when I bought my home in late 2005, I had a wish list, and fireplace was right up there in the “needs” section.
Indeed, most homes have one, because along with having a full-sized kitchen or a second bathroom, a fireplace or woodstove is one of the most common requirements. I wonder if this is true everywhere, and not just in an area where, if your main source of heat fails, you need a backup.
So this photo, taken directly from the MLS listing I first saw, was what my fireplace first looked like:
As soon as I got the keys, my first order of business was to paint that room something other than the colour of crud (that yellow-y beige, reminiscent of grease trapped in the grill of your stove vent). I chose blue with white wainscotting and trim:
The next incarnation, once furniture moved in
It took a while to realize I didn’t like the terracotta tile surround of the fireplace, and that I could paint it – so I painted it white. What a difference it made! It brightened up that corner of the room (you’ll see a pic later down this post).
A 2013-dated picture of a fire, simply because FIRE!
But alas, I rarely used the fireplace, because as every homeowner learns, they are an exit to the outdoors through which all your heat escapes. The glass doors on a fireplace limit that loss in a very minimal way; in fact I hung a blanket across the fireplace when it was really cold and didn’t light any fires at all. Fires were basically for the fall and spring. I still have some of the firewood left to me by the previous owner, which I’m saving up for campfires with friends.
Pellet stoves: an ecologically sound replacement
My carbon footprint is probably as close to neutral as it can get without being surrounded by forest and going solar. I’ve planted a lot of trees, so I don’t feel bad at all about burning wood for its ambiance. Still, there’s a better way to do it than how we have…
I wanted to replace my cold and drafty fireplace with an EPA-certified wood burning stove insert (“insert” means putting a stove…into a fireplace!) But then Montreal enacted the 2013 anti-fireplace law (controversial, for good reason) that disallowed solid fuel stoves and masonry heaters. The law is now revised so that fuel type is not important, if the emissions certification protects air quality.
I prefer solid wood as fuel because to have local private forests, we need to value them. The best way to value them on private land, after the joy of owning a forest of course, is to have woodlots. Firewood comes from dropped deadwood and selective logging. Cutting a small percentage of a forest every year (around 3%) is sustainable and generally not considered harmful for an ecosystem (considering every tree on a case by case basis). What happens if we don’t value firewood? We will lose woodlots – small forests – as landowners transform them into something more “profitable.”
With the new law, I decided on a pellet stove (pellets are compressed sawdust from the milling process). I did my research, acquired the permit, and bought the Harmon pellet stove P35i fireplace insert. It heats up to 900 square feet, which is enough to make my TV den / home office nice and toasty. Foyers Lambert did the job in late fall 2014.
This is how I enjoyed my new fireplace in Winter 2015:
Here’s where you can see the painted white tile surround of the fireplace.
I installed the floor tiles in the spring of 2015. Insurance policies require 18 inches of tile or fireproof flooring in front of the hearth, so this is how it looked with the new floor. Unfortunately, the tile installer didn’t notice the ashes drawer under the stove, so it’s rather a tight fit.
The cover photo (at the top of this post!) is how I enjoy the pellet stove now. I buy my pellets at Reno Depot and at Rona on St. Patrick, and a bag lasts me about three to four days of lounging in the TV den/office space for about 3 hours per night (a bag is about 12 hours of burn). At around $5.75 a bag, this is an inexpensive way to be warm, comfortable, and happy (the Danes have one word for all three: hyggelige) on a cold night.
Unfortunately, woodstoves use metal pipes to line the chimneys — unless you choose a different egress for the smoke, little that there is (up to 90% less smoke than traditional fires). Swifts can’t cling to and build their nests in metal pipes; they need masonry towers.
This is a long-running “lifestyle” blog about the pleasures of living like a farm kid in an urban context. There’s a big focus on ecology and wildlife because this has brought me joy – and this is also the greatest potential we have of restoring some balance to nature where we live.
I write practical content for people to do little projects that basically make things beautiful, but also support climate readiness (energy efficiency, heat reduction, drought tolerance, flood prevention, and more). I’m a relentlless promoter of having a live-and-let-live attitude towards biodiversity.
Comments and questions are welcome! And if you’re anywhere near the Montreal region, you can also use my “Rewilding” service to landscape your property using native plants, convert to a green driveway, and prevent your windows from killing birds.
