Canada: Climate change ticks ever closer

On the Leslie St. spit, signs of global warming are being picked right from the feathers of migratory birds. And the ticks now spreading north carry with them the spectre of Lyme disease

At the foot of Leslie St., a spit of land fans out into Lake Ontario. Over the years, the man-made peninsula, built with rubble from Toronto construction sites, has grown into an urban wilderness, home to butterflies, birds, rabbits and the occasional coyote.

The cottonwoods, birches, grasslands and bugs make the park popular with migratory birds that stop in to refuel on their flights
But lurking among the feathers of these international travellers are blood-sucking stowaway ticks that can carry Lyme disease.

Every morning before dawn during the spring and fall bird migration, Dan Derbyshire, co-ordinator of the Bird Research Station in Tommy Thompson Park, organizes a small group of volunteers who track the birds winging through the region.

The station is part of the Canadian Migration Monitoring Network, a string of sites across southern Canada and the northern United States that monitor the population trends of northern breeding birds.

From March to June, in 2005 and 2006, Derbyshire and his team of volunteer birders plucked ticks from the heads of the migrating birds. Then they mailed the ticks to scientists who are trying to gain a better understanding of how birds and climate change might increase the spread of Lyme disease through Canada.

The Toronto Star