Fall Owl Banding Week 5

Since our last blog post, the weather has really shown up at the Point. Out of ~84 possible hours we could have our nets open this past week, we were only able to open ~18 of those hours. The rest of the time, we were forced to keep our nets closed due to high winds and rain. While not being able to do our job has been a bit discouraging, the storm that hit the Point yesterday was impressive. We are lucky enough to have a weather station on the roof of the banding lab. If you look at the image below, the two numbers in the upper right corner show the sustained wind speed (51.8 km/h) and the wind gust speed (72.4 km/h).

While this weather is not amenable to owl banding, it is amenable to duck flights. Be sure to check out Waterbird Counter Alec Olivier’s blog post later this week to see his duck flight numbers during this unprecedented wind event.

Okay, now back to the owls. While we weren’t able to be open that much in the past week, we were able to add a handful of birds to our total numbers during the times we could open. In total, we banded three Northern Saw-whet Owls and, most excitingly, our second Long-eared Owl of the season.

We only have ~10 days left in our banding season. Luckily it looks like the weather will give us a little bit of a break and, fingers crossed, bring us some more birds.

Season Totals
Northern Saw-whet Owl: 170
Long-eared Owl: 2
Barred Owl: 7

~ Tori Steely and Dana Reid
2022 Fall Owl Banders