Dogs and birdwatchers try to co-exist in Summit Park

Cool and sunny weather during the latter part of last weekend saw many birders and dog walkers come out in droves to share the walkways and enjoy the delights found in the spring in the woods on the summit of Westmount.

Last weekend, amateur botanists would also have found much to their delight that the trilliums, which are often the first wildflower to be noticed in the spring by casual walkers, were at last in full and abundant bloom.

In order to protect the many thousands of birds that gather on the summit, the City establishes a bird migratory period from April 15 to June 15 every year. To ensure that the regulation is respected, Public Security Officers carry out random patrols and can issue $75 tickets to any violators.

“Most of the birds here we can see in a lot of other places,” says Gaétan Proulx, a birdwatcher and photographer who spends time in Summit Park about a dozen times each year. “But there are a lot of warblers. When they cross over the mountain, they stay for about a month here.”

Nonetheless, the relationship between the canines and the birdwatchers isn’t always an easy one.

“The birds are afraid of the dogs,” he says. “When the dogs come, they fly away and they don’t want to nest here. If there are a lot of dogs they don’t nest.”

Proulx also complains that on occasions when dogs aren’t leashed, they’ll sometimes approach and disrupt the birdwatchers in their hobby, which typically requires silence and a degree of stealthiness.

“Some people still don’t obey the Westmount bylaw of keeping dogs on leash,” says Alyson Steel, a Westmount resident who regularly takes her dog to Summit Park for walks — always with a leash.

“But I do actually support the birdwatchers. I was here a little while ago walking my dog around the perimeter, and there was a woman with a dog off-leash. And I stopped her and told her politely. And she said, ‘She’s not disturbing anybody,’ and I said it’s not the people, it’s the birds.”

It would appear that the dog-leash law isn’t the only regulation that some people using Summit Park are ignoring to their peril. While picking flowers or removing any of the abundant foliage that grows on the summit is also forbidden, last Monday a couple was observed filling two plastic garbage bags with greenery taken from an area to the side of a path and leaving with it.

Photo: Martin C. Barry