Oscar is only a little bit younger than the new friends he made Wednesday at Central Public School, but he's a whole lot faster.
In fact, eight-year-old Oscar is one of the fastest animals in the world, capable of flying at speeds upward of 250 kilometres per hour.
Oscar is a peregrine falcon, and he's used to being around humans more than birds. So this school educational session about how the bird of prey made it back from the brink of extinction, didn't exactly ruffle his feathers.
Oscar's caretaker is Kyle Holloway, an outreach programs educator for the non-profit Canadian Peregrine Foundation.
Holloway explained to the grades five and six students that peregrines are considered raptors.
"The dinosaur raptors are long extinct," he told the children. "But what I have for you right in this case - and it's not big enough for a Toronto Raptor basketball player either - is a bird of prey."
Holloway taught the Central students that peregrines vanished from Ontario as the result of insecticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane,
more commonly known as DDT. He said the chemical caused reproductive failure in the birds.
"The birds are eating the birds that are eating those crops and insects," answered 10-year-old student Lilly Charbonneau about the food chain link to the carcinogen.
The students learned that with the help of government, breeding programs, the peregrine population began to recover in the mid-nineties.
Notably, said Holloway, Toronto was the place where the birds flourished. It has a climate suitable to avoid migration, few predators, and an endless supply of pigeons to feast on.
