Lake level at Queens Bay (courtesy Wateroffice)
Do birds react to a freshet?
On April 24, this year’s freshet began on Kootenay Lake. The lake level had been declining during the winter as precipitation became locked in the mountains as snow. Now, driven by the melting of that snow, the Lake has begun to rise. It will not peak until late June after which it will settle back to summer levels.
How does the changing water level affect wildlife?
One consequence is that we probably have no loons nesting along the shore. Loons need to nest within, say, a meter of the water’s edge and the variable shoreline during the freshet does not allow this.
I would not have thought the freshet would have any consequences for an osprey, but then I had not previously watched an osprey build its nest. It seems that rising water changes the source of the osprey’s building supplies. When the water level was falling, my resident osprey couple quickly depleted the sticks on adjacent beaches. Now that the rising water dislodges and floats debris from along the extensive shoreline, the osprey need merely pick up sticks as they drift by its nest.
Handy building material just floats by and is easily picked up…
and delivered to the nest.
