Welcome to Bird Friendly City Camrose
The City of Camrose was certified by Nature Canada as a Bird Friendly City in 2025. As an effort to enhance our city's Bird Friendly initiatives, the Bird Friendly City Camrose Committee has made it their goal to reduce key threats to birds, restore natural areas so birds can thrive, involve residents in admiring and monitoring local bird populations, and implement municipal policies to protect urban bird populations.
What is a Bird Friendly City?
Nature Canada Describes a BFC as the following:
- Key threats to birds are effectively mitigated
- Nature is restored so native bird populations can thrive
- Residents are actively engaged in admiring and monitoring local bird populations
- Organizations are creating events to protect birds
- Progressive municipal policies are created to protect urban bird populations
- A Bird Team has been created to oversee and lead these iniatives
How we are approaching the requirements:
- Organizing events such as the Purple Martin Festival to give our community the opportunity to admire birds and learn more about how to preserve them.
- Participating in a May species count.
- Organizing educational events at the Stoney Creek Centre on how to protect birds and cats.
- Supporting efforts to establish a no roam bylaw for cats to help protect birds.
- The Bird Friendly City Camrose Committee meets regularly to discuss methods to reduce threats to birds.
- We have written articles in the Camrose Booster regarding the threat of cats on bird populations and are trying to spread the word on threats like window collisions.
City Bird Selection
The Camrose Bird Friendly City Camrose Committee is launching a community campaign to choose an official City Bird! Since we are officially a Bird Friendly City, the next step is to pick an avian ambassador to help encourage the city's relationship with nature.
A City Bird helps people connect with nature by giving them a familiar species to recognize and care about. Small steps such as this are important reminders of the wildlife with whom we share our city.
The chosen bird will help encourage bird watching, conservation efforts, and protection of bird-friendly spaces. This campaign is an important first step toward building long-lasting interest in nature-based conservation and stewardship in the city.
Help Choose Our City Bird
We invite you to help us celebrate our local wildlife, your vote will help us identify the City Bird of Camrose! Our committee has received nominations from various outdoor and nature groups in Camrose to provide you with the following candidates for Camrose's City Bird.
Black-capped Chickadee
These non-migratory birds are Alberta’s most common chickadee, surviving the harshest of winters and nesting in tree cavities. They are known for their unique “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” call and are commonly spotted near birches, alders, and poplars. They have a wide range of diets including insects, plants, and small carrion.
Purple Martin
Purple Martins are known for their social nature and unique blueish-purple feathers. After making the long journey from South America, they come here to breed, taking residence in around 50 birdhouses around Camrose. With the help of Purple Martin Landlords, they are thriving. They are insectivorous, capturing insects mid-flight, including dragonflies, moths and damselflies.
Canada Goose
These birds need no introduction, often seen in urban and suburban areas taking advantage of the abundant food and few predators. Canada Geese mate for life and stay with the same partner for over two decades while migrating north and south each year. They are very protective of their young and can even sleep with one eye open, shutting down half of their brain at a time.
Blue Jay
Blue Jays have been known to breed and live in Alberta all year round. They are very intelligent, often displaying complex courtship rituals to establish pair bonds. They eat seeds, nuts, fruits, and some small vertebrates. You can most likely find them in coniferous forests, parks, and suburban areas. These birds' colour comes from light scattering through their feathers rather than from pigment, displaying a blue crest, back, wings, and tail.
Red-breasted Nuthatch
These tiny, energetic birds have a unique flight pattern, making short, bouncy flights between coniferous trees and making calls resembling a toy horn. Red-breasted Nuthatches make their own houses by excavating cavities into dead wood and often put a sticky substance by the entrance to deter predators. Having little fear of humans, they are often observed close-up and are frequent visitors to bird feeders.