Owl Banding

The first Long-eared Owl of the fall season. Photo by Sarah Montalvo Howdy! Since our last update, we've banded 50 more Northern Saw-whet Owls, with our best night of the season being 22 in one night. There's been a late flight with northern saw-whets that still have juvenile plumage the past couple [...]

Greetings from the WPBO banding station! We’ve just wrapped up our first week of the 2023 fall owl banding season, and our first night (September 14/15) yielded nine Northern Saw-whet Owls, the season high so far. Our next three nights were a bit slower — we banded three Northern Saw-whet Owls on Friday night, [...]

After banding just 45 juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) in July, results so far in August have come as a welcomed surprise. We banded another 26 juveniles this week, bringing August's total to 112 and the season total to 157 juvenile NSWO banded. Although this is at the low end compared to other years, [...]

Our streak of consecutive nights continued this past week, and we have now opened nets on all 46 nights of the season so far. This week we welcomed Sarah Montalvo to the field crew, and her first night was the second most productive night of the season with the banding of 18 owls. The [...]

Things picked up this past week after being in a serious rut during the last three weeks of July. Our nightly total from July 8 to August 1 never exceeded eight owls banded. Aside from the night of July 11, when we banded four juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls, our nightly total for juveniles was [...]

As July ended, it was amazing how consistent things were. We're obviously in a down year, which is an expected event, but things have been almost comical recently. Late July and early August are typically the peak period for juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO). The first little spike in juveniles occurred on July 17 [...]

Things have remained slow but steady over the past week. We only caught one bird on July 19, then got skunked the next night. Since then, each of the last five nights has produced three juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) with a few adults and a few Long-eared Owls (LEOW) mixed in here and [...]

Well, there's no way around the fact that we had a slow week. Over the past week, we banded 19 owls, with just one night producing more than three owls. On the plus side, we finally had a night when juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) outnumbered adults, and they outnumbered them nine to five [...]

The weather this past week was a mix of cool, pleasant nights, hot, buggy nights, and some severe thunderstorms that knocked the power out for 10 hours. The owls have remained slow but steady. The most productive night was July 7, with the banding of 18 Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) and one Long-eared Owl [...]

We began WPBO’s 17th summer owl banding season on July 1. The main focus of the summer season is juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO). Before we began this research in 2006, it was believed that juvenile NSWO effectively remained around their natal territories until the fall migration period. WPBO remains the only site where [...]