An Ancient Giant in our Midst

As we enter June, Manitobans spend time outside gardening at home or swimming at the cottage, except for herpetologists (reptile and amphibian scientists) when June is time to look for toads! This is a good month to be listening for Great Plains toads (Anaxyrus cognatus) and plains spadefoot toads (Spea bombifrons) as males gather in wet spots to call and attract mates. These two species are almost unknown to most people, despite being found in good numbers if you look and listen in the right places, and their “love songs” can carry for over two kilometres! But they are overlooked because they generally don’t call until it is dark, and in June that means well after 10 pm; most of us (if you are not a herpetologist) are inside avoiding mosquitoes and likely getting ready for bed. 

Another reason these two toad species “call under the radar” is that their ranges are restricted to the southwestern corner of the province. As many Manitobans head east to lake country, they are missing one of nature’s incredible sound and light shows – hearing dozens of each these two species calling together under a clear, moon- and starlit prairie sky is a special experience. Here’s a taste of that sound (you might want to turn the volume down!): 

The metallic trill in the foreground is a Great Plains toad and in the background are the nasal snores of plains spadefoot toads. These were calling from a temporary wet spot in a farmer’s field near Melita. 

The ecology of Manitoba’s southwest is unique and worth exploring. In addition to these two toads, there are many species of plants, birds, mammals, and invertebrates that are found nowhere else in Manitoba. Birds and mammals are always the most obvious to people, but smaller creatures like amphibians make up a considerable portion of the wild animal biomass of the southwestern corner (perhaps equalling that of small mammals and exceeding that of birds). In wet years, the numerous temporary ponds, prairie potholes, and other wetlands provide habitat for amphibians to breed and lay eggs, and for their larvae to grow and transform into frogs, toads, and salamanders. Once adult, most Manitoban amphibians are essentially terrestrial, returning to wetlands only to breed and lay eggs. 

Great Plains toads and plains spadefoot toads are no exception, and avoid detection by people and predators by spending much of their lives buried underground. During our cold winters, these two species need to hibernate below the frost line. They are good diggers and can burrow into softer ground or sand – spadefoot toads are so-named for the hard, keratinous, sharp-edged bumps on their back feet that they use as “spades” to dig backwards into the soil. Great Plains toads are also known to use old rodent burrows to get underground. In spring and summer, when it can be hot and dry on the prairies, these two species escape the searing heat by remaining below ground during the day and hunting for food at night when it is cooler. Even then, they often remain buried for long periods to retain moisture and come to the surface only after heavy rainfalls to breed. 

The Manitoba Museum is studying the Great Plains toad because it is considered threatened in Manitoba. For many animals in the southwest of the province, loss of habitat and pollutants are concerns because much of our original prairie landscape has been considerably modified by commercial agriculture, resource extraction, and transportation corridors – all through the demands of our modern lifestyles. Some good news, though, has come through research at the Museum, where Great Plains toads have been found to have a larger distribution than originally thought. Last spring’s heavy rains meant that there were many temporary ponds providing suitable habitat, even in places that are usually quite dry. The result was that toads in these areas, likely inactive as breeders for several years, had opportunities to attract mates and reproduce. Museum researchers discovered the species at several new sites, some up to 25 km outside of the previously known range! 

Within this revised distribution of Great Plains toads, plains spadefoot toads were found throughout and in higher numbers. Both toad species, despite the extensive use of pesticides and loss of habitat, seem to be surviving today’s highly modified conditions, but how successfully remains guesswork. Without consistent monitoring programs, it is impossible to measure the size of toad populations or to determine if their numbers are stable, increasing, or decreasing. And because spadefoots and Great Plains toads adjust breeding activity to cycles of drought and wet periods, it is a huge challenge to determine population sizes. In wet years, like 2022, the toads seem to be everywhere, but in a dry year they seem to disappear. This means that monitoring programs need to be maintained over long periods through several wet/dry cycles. And climate change is making these even less predictable. 

The Manitoba Museum has just begun a pilot project to monitor these two amphibian prairie specialists. Automated recording units have been set up at a handful of locations where Great Plains and spadefoot toads have been found in previous years and where temporary ponds existed at the time the units were deployed, all with the hope that this will increase detection rates. The units are set to record at particular times over each 24-hour period throughout the spring and summer months. Temperature and humidity loggers are paired with the recording units. The goal is to determine what triggers breeding activity in the two species, what times of the year it occurs, and in what numbers. These data will help determine measures that can conserve these two toads and, perhaps, other species that rely on similar habitat. 

We hope that this will mean that Manitobans can go a-toad hunting and experience their incredible chorus on the prairies in perpetuity. 

And, of course, everyone has the opportunity to visit the Museum’s new Prairies Gallery to learn the calls of prairie toads and frogs and explore their fascinating life histories – above and below ground! 

During this cold March, the new Prairies Gallery is a comfortable place to explore the diversity, adaptations, and life histories of some of Manitoba’s wildlife. For many visitors, especially the young, the exhibits often provide the first close look at the details of insect wings and wolf teeth, the first chance to explore life underground, or to experience the wonder of just how many other animal species are fellow Manitobans.  

That can mean that a gallery or exhibit is an important influence on attitudes towards our environment and might inspire the next generation of conservation advocates. And parts of our collections, including some birds now on exhibit in the new gallery, have a long history educating the public and have been filling that role for almost 100 years! 

But many visitors don’t realize that most of the museum’s collections are not on exhibit. For example, over 95% of our bird collections, almost 7,000 specimens, are in climate-controlled storage on the 4th floor. 

Why would we have all these bird specimens if they aren’t on exhibit? Where did they come from and why so many? 

Our behind-the-scenes bird collection is a combination of inheritance from earlier versions of the Manitoba Museum, donated private collections, and, more recently, window and vehicle casualties brought in by the public or through relationships with zoos, government, and universities. In the distant past, birds could be professionally collected and were even traded among private citizens. That practice is, thankfully, no longer allowed, but many of these collections, some more than 100 years old, were eventually donated to the Museum where they have had a second ‘life’ through their value for public education and for scientific study. These specimens not only grace our exhibit halls, but have contributed information that appears in our exhibits as labels, short panels, or videos through primary research by scientists at the Manitoba Museum and researchers from around the world. 

Having large numbers of bird specimens means that we can learn a great deal about where they live, what they eat, and other aspects of their life histories. Like people, each individual bird is unique, but having several from different places provides a statistical sample and a better understanding of their biology and a record of geographical variation in size, colour, and behaviour. 

The collection is like a library or archive of the lives of birds in Manitoba. And like a library, scientists can read and borrow the ‘books’, the specimens, to study them and to discover the stories they tell about how our birds live and what they tell about our environment in general. 

So how can these bird specimens contribute to conservation? 

Collections include birds from over many decades that act much like a time machine, letting us know where and in what quality of environment they lived. Specimens provide baseline data for knowing a species occurrence and range at a specific time in the past and whether it is still there. This can help determine if species are being affected by climate change, habitat loss, or other factors. Today, bird records can include photographs and sound recordings, but this technology has only very recently been widely available. Where birds lived 30, 50, or 100 or more years ago can only be determined with certainty by voucher specimens, that is, physical evidence that a species was found at a particular place at a particular time. But even today, because Manitoba is a big province and much of it is difficult to access, we are still unsure of where some species occur. Museum curators are among the few scientists performing on-the-ground surveys to determine baseline data on distribution and retaining physical evidence of that distribution. Without these comparative data we can’t know what might be changing nor determine if conservation action should be undertaken. It is impossible to be responsible stewards of our natural world if we don’t know what lives where! 

 Most of Manitoba’s birds spend only a few short, warm months here to raise their young and then spend the majority of the year to the south. That means that even if we take appropriate conservation measures to safeguard our birds here, they face further challenges elsewhere. But where is that elsewhere? 

Collections can help to determine where our birds spend the winter and can pinpoint where international collaborative conservation efforts should be directed. A recent study spear-headed by researchers at the University of Central Oklahoma used feather samples from specimens in the Manitoba Museum and other institutions to examine their unique molecular signatures (isotopes) to determine where four species of prairie birds overwinter. They found, for example, that prairie populations of the elusive yellow rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) – a species of special concern in Canada – spend their winters in the western portions of the Gulf of Mexico. Conservation policies can now be introduced to better manage habitat in both the breeding and wintering ranges for this rarely encountered species. 

And the collections can provide valuable information about changes in our environment. Using samples of ivory gull (Pagophila eburnean) from several museums, including a 1926 specimen from the Manitoba Museum, university and Environment Canada researchers recreated a 130-year record of mercury levels in this endangered species. This time series, like a time machine, could trace the history of mercury contamination in this Arctic gull, finding that levels have increased dramatically in northern food webs. This museum collection-based study showed that bioaccumulation, the gradual build-up of heavy metals through the food chain, puts top predators like the ivory gull, fishes, and marine mammals at risk from pollutants like mercury. 

Museum collections go well beyond their important educational role in exhibits and programming to create advocates for conservation. As permanent archives of the distribution of organisms and as a critical resource for scientific research at the Museum and at science institutions around the world, specimens in the hand contribute to understanding our environment and determining strategies and policies for responsible ecological stewardship. Although I have focused on bird collections to illustrate a few applications, the Museum collections of insects, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and other animals, along with those of plants, mosses, lichens, and fungi, as well as the representative fossils of  these and earlier organisms in the paleontology collections, provide important data to interpret the past, understand the present, and consider the future of the natural world in Manitoba. 

Celebrating Canada’s first 150 years does not usually involve thinking about the environment or biodiversity, and certainly Confederation is a human history event. But human actions have an impact on our environment and the creation of Canada was no exception. Our latest exhibit, Legacies of Confederation: A New Look at Manitoba History, offers an opportunity to explore those impacts, those legacies, from a natural history perspective. Given the massive changes to Manitoba’s environment since 1867 (and 1870 when we became Canada’s fifth province), it is easy to focus on the negative effects; indeed, grasslands and many of their component parts have become rare or have even disappeared. But becoming a nation can also bring substantial resources to bear on mitigating those impacts through policy, funding, social conscience and national pride. 

Outlaw #5 is a magnificent bison head that hung in the Winnipeg City Council Chambers in 1912 and is now hanging for all to see in the Legacies exhibit. This seems the beginning of a depressing story rather than a positive one, and in some ways it is; this bull bison is an unlucky representative of one of the last significant herds of plains bison (Bison bison bison) in North America at the turn of the 20th century. But it also represents the beginning of an incredibly successful conservation story – bringing bison back from the brink of extinction. I have introduced this specimen before, but this amazing mount has so many incredible stories to tell that I can’t resist an encore presentation. 

The big bull once roamed the grassy hills of Montana as part of the Pablo-Allard herd. Much of this herd, perhaps all, was made up of what were originally Canadian bison (although nationalities are irrelevant to the animals!). The initial herd was the offspring of a few calves brought from near the Alberta/Montana border in the early 1870s. Others arrived through a rather circuitous route, likely from calves caught near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan by Charles Alloway (brother of William Alloway, founder of the Winnipeg Foundation) and James McKay (Manitoban politician, Treaty negotiator) also in the early 1870s and kept at Deer Lodge in Winnipeg. These went to Stony Mountain Penitentiary under the care of Samuel Bedson (warden), becoming a herd of perhaps 100 over about ten years. Most of these were sold to Charles “Buffalo” Jones in the late 1880s and brought to Kansas before eventually becoming part of the Pablo-Allard herd in Montana through sale. Here the herd grew to several hundred, but Pablo (Allard had passed away) was notified by the U.S. government that his lands could no longer be used for bison. He offered them for sale to Washington but negotiations bogged down. 

Canada came to the rescue. Alexander Ayotte, a Manitoban working for Canadian Immigration in Montana at that time, heard that the bison were up for sale and he notified Canadian officials. A deal was struck and Canada bought the herd in 1907. There is some suggestion that purchasing the Pablo-Allard herd was as much an opportunity for the government in Ottawa to poke a stick in the eye of the United States as it was to preserve a species, but there is little doubt that the individuals directly involved with the transfer, as well as the general public, were genuinely committed to conservation. Regardless, the end result was that over 700 bison were brought by train to Alberta, the nucleus of essentially all plains bison we see in Canada today and the basis of a conservation success story. 

So where does Outlaw #5 fit in? As you might imagine, getting wild bison onto a train to Canada is no easy feat and some of them, the “outlaws”, refused to board. These remaining animals had no home and they were shot. At least thirteen outlaw bulls found their way to Winnipeg and into the skilled hands of Manitoba’s Official Taxidermist (yes, we had one of those), E. W. Darbey. He mounted these in his shop at 233 Main Street and they were auctioned in the fall of 1911. 

As I noted in my original blog, I used the horn patterns from the archival photographs and those on the Museum specimen to identify it as #5, marked by the yellow arrow in the image above, a task that was none-too-easy or even certain. To prepare the specimen for exhibit, it required careful conservation to repair damage on the skin, nose, and ears, as well as stabilization of the backboard before we could hang it. Carolyn Sirett, our conservator, had to remove the backboard from the mount and the first thing she saw was that the mount was numbered. She immediately called me to say I should come up to her lab. To my relief (and some satisfaction), in large black writing was “No. 5”! Carolyn  repaired the mount, and removed an incredible amount of dirt from the fur to make the specimen look much as it must have over 100 years ago. 

Although I have not yet determined how Outlaw #5 came to be in the possession of The Hingston Smith Arms Co. Ltd. (they are not listed as purchasers at the auction), documents generously shared by the City of Winnipeg Archives show that in January of 1912 that company offered to hang the head in the City Council Chambers. This was in order for it to “be seen to advantage” and determine if Council would be willing to purchase it. After all, it was “the finest specimen of Buffalo Bull Head” and “the best one of the lot of out-law bulls of the Pablo herd.” It seems most of the Council agreed, as only one month later they voted 10 to 7 to buy the head for $750 – equivalent to over $18,000 today! And they engraved the description much as boasted by the company onto the plate that adorns the backboard: 

Confederation has fostered the diversity of perspectives that will help us through environmental challenges and that will work towards solutions over the next 150 years. Our exhibit might not provide the kind of birthday celebration we are likely to see on July 1st, but instead encourages a more sobering and reflective look at Confederation from a Manitoba viewpoint – how it happened, where we’ve been, and where we’d like to go. The incredible artifacts and specimens we have had the privilege to exhibit and interpret provide signposts to guide that thoughtful reflection. 

Legacies of Confederation: A New Look at Manitoba History is open until January 7, 2018 and is free with admission to the Museum Galleries. 

September 1st of 2014 marked the grim anniversary of the death of the last passenger pigeon on Earth. It’s extinction is probably the only one for which an exact hour of demise is recorded; the last individual was a captive bird, named Martha, that expired at 2pm local time at the Cincinatti Zoo. The disappearance of this species is almost impossible to comprehend, as it was once the commonest bird in North America, perhaps even the world, with population estimates of between 3 and 5 billion – yes, that’s billion – in the mid-1800s. 

But the capacity of humans to destroy knows no bounds. The awe-inspiring flocks that were described as darkening the sky from horizon to horizon, and the massive breeding colonies that numbered in the tens of millions were slaughtered by market hunters and shamefully wasted by hungry locals alike. Unfettered exploitation along with changes in environment due to deforestation resulted in the shocking disappearance of passenger pigeons from the wild by about 1900. 

Although Manitoba never hosted massive colonies, large flocks provided food for First Nations peoples and hungry homesteaders, and were important enough to frontier life to merit frequent mention in local newspapers as “wild pigeon” or merely “pigeons.” Passenger pigeons bred in small groups in the south of the province and were seen as far north as Hudson Bay. 

In contrast to their abundance in the 19th century, there are relatively few specimens of passenger pigeons in natural history museums and even fewer of those that have information on when and where they were collected. This is in part because systematic museum and research collecting in North America was still relatively new, and because passenger pigeons were so common; who carefully collects crows or starlings today? The Manitoba Museum has five taxidermied specimens of passenger pigeon.  

Until recently, all of the Museum’s passenger pigeons were of unknown locality – we weren’t even certain that our birds were actually from Manitoba! Record-keeping was not always thorough in the 1930s when some of them came into the possession of the original Manitoba Museum, and the others were in private collections where their exact histories have been lost. However, while examining some photographs of the exhibits in the old Civic Auditorium from the 1930s, I noticed that some were of the bird cases. One of these had three of our pigeon specimens on display! And another photo showed that one mount had very specific data on its label just below it tacked to the back of the case: 

Did the Museum still have this particular specimen? Comparing our present collection with the photographs, I was able to determine that one of the five birds we have is an exact match for the Winnipegosis specimen that had been on display in the 1930s. This is especially important because detailed information on this bird was published by G.E. Atkinson in 1904, a taxidermist and naturalist from Portage la Prairie. He prepared this specimen and noted its date of collection as April 10th of 1898 – the last specimen ever collected in Canada! 

So the specimen has come full circle in its history with the Manitoba Museum. It was first on display in the mid-1930s in the Civic Auditorium, was in our collections storage for decades, and is now on exhibit again 90 years later at Rupert and Main. It remains, after all that time, still able to perform the unfortunate, but important function as a flag-bearer representing all extinct species and as a warning of where careless attitudes to our environment can lead us. 

Aldo Leopold, the famous Wisconsin environmentalist, said in memory of the passenger pigeon in 1947: 

“There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book-pigeons cannot dive out of a cloud to make the deer run for cover, nor clap their wings in thunderous applause of mast-laden woods. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather; they live forever by not living at all.”

And indeed, the Museum’s passenger pigeons will not, unfortunately, repopulate our skies. But they will always be here, for that is the value of museum collections – archives of natural history and silent witness to changes in our world. Our collections provide opportunity to study, marvel, contemplate, and learn. And although there are no more passenger pigeons in the wild, they can still be found in museums. I invite you to the Manitoba Museum and the new Prairies Gallery (2021) to see the last passenger pigeon ever collected in Canada, along with one other, and to reflect on their fate as well as our own place in the world. 

If you have any further information on these specimens or others, please contact the Museum.