N.B. Museum set to add 1st rare owl specimen found in the province in over 100 years

The New Brunswick Museum is set to add a rare great grey owl to its extensive bird collection in July.

This owl will become the first specimen of its kind found in New Brunswick to be held at a Canadian museum in over 100 years, according to Greg Jongsma, the museum's acting curator of the zoology department.

Jongsma said the department is excited for the new bird specimen. He believes this addition will be a great resource for scientific research globally, adding to their collection of 13,000 bird species, the largest in Atlantic Canada.

"As sad as this is, the loss of this individual's life, this great grey owl, it's of tremendous value to the museum and the research community," said Jongsma. "Because this is one of the first specimens for New Brunswick, [and] it's certainly the first specimen from New Brunswick in any Canadian collections."

The great grey owl is one of the largest owls in North America in terms of height. The bird is often found in northern areas and it usually migrates down southern latitudes when there's a lack of food supply, which are often rodents for these birds.

According to Jongsma, the owl is considered a rare bird in the province because New Brunswick is too far away from these owls' natural habitat, explaining that they will often find prey closer to their habitats.

The New Brunswick museum only knows of nine confirmed sightings of the bird, according to records vetted by the New Brunswick Bird Committee, an organization created in 1992 and sponsored by the museum to come up with an official bird list for the province.

The committee, in collaboration with the museum, maintains the official bird list by screening and acting on reports of potential new species, ensuring accuracy.

Jim Wilson, previous chair of the committee, said in an emailed statement that the owl joining the museum is considered to be the ninth great grey owl that has reached New Brunswick "for certain" in the past 125 years.

According to Wilson there are two other existing specimens that were collected in the province in the late 1890s.

The collectors were not recorded, so the museum has little information on how these owls were discovered, and both specimens currently reside in American museums.

One can be found in the American Museum of Natural History and the other in the Field Museum in Chicago.

The owl joining the New Brunswick Museum was found this past April in Lakeside near Hampton, with a hip and eye injury due to being struck by a car.

The bird was put under the care of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, who identified her as a female, and attempted to rehabilitate the owl, who was in overall good condition besides the injuries it sustained.

According to the AWI director Pam Novak, joint injuries can be fatal for birds who need their leg strength to hunt like the great grey, which needs to be able to pounce over snow to catch their prey.

However, due to the overall good health of the bird, the institute decided to operate.

"We knew we were up against a low prognosis of this going well, but knowing she was in good condition we said 'let's give this a try,' because maybe something might be different with this particular case," said Novak.

Despite the surgery being a success, the recovery of the owl wasn't.

Novak explained that the owl struggled to regain strength and muscle tone in the injured leg, even with her hip joint being realigned.

Taking into consideration the owl's deteriorating condition and her quality of life with an unusable leg, the institute decided to humanely euthanize the bird in June.

Novak said this was a hard decision to make as they were hoping to release the owl back in the wild, and track her movement to figure out the owl's flying patterns in order to do further research on the species in the province.

"It would have been really interesting to see if she can continue the story of where she came from," said Novak. "Would she go back or would she stay in this area trying to establish a territory?

"Unfortunately those are questions we are not going to be able to get."

However, Novak believes the owl's death wasn't in vain.

She agreed with Jongsma and said that the bird's transfer to the museum would facilitate crucial research on its species for both the museum and other researchers around the world.

"There's a lot that can be told from just them being able to analyze some of the tissue samples, some of the DNA ... there's a lot of opportunity for further research into the species itself," said Novak.

Jongsma intends to retrieve the owl in early July.

The owl will provide samples to study the owl's genetic diversity, population trends, or distributional shifts.

For Jongsma the addition of the owl will not only be valuable to understand the species within a New Brunswick context but also for the scientific community overall.

"It's an exciting rare occurrence to have this great grey owl specimen from New Brunswick, but it's now become a part of a larger collection that [is] greater than the sum of its parts," he said.

"[It's] all together where the value really comes out for research and understanding life on our planet."