The unsettled weather continues to be of significant negative impact on the season, but we have again seen little signs of hope since our last post. This past week we banded another 29 Northern Saw-whet Owls and caught another that was previously banded. On Sunday night, we heard the first two Long-eared Owls of [...]
Ugh. Being part of the spring field staff at WPBO in March, you have to be prepared for the return of winter, assuming that winter has even shown any signs of leaving. After some signs of spring during the first week of the season, the weather this past week has been pretty brutal. Weather [...]
The owl banding season has started relatively slowly, but a significant weather system pushing up from the south produced the first little push of the season over the last two nights. To date, we have banded 37 Northern Saw-whet Owls and caught three previously banded saw-whets. ~ Chris Neri & Nova Mackentley 2022 WPBO [...]
Highlights: Ash-throated Flycatcher (pictured above), LeConte’s Sparrow, and Black-backed Woodpecker This past week has been a little bit of déjà vu, but we’re not complaining. The season’s second Ash-throated Flycatcher was found on the evening of Oct. 2 and continued all day on the third. Previous to this fall, there were only two ash-throated records, one from [...]
LeConte's Sparrow (left) & Harris's Sparrow (right) Highlights: Sedge Wren, Harris’s Sparrow, LeConte’s Sparrow, & Black-backed Woodpecker Songbird activity in the woods has been particularly good the last few days. Warbler migration may be winding down, but we've continued to see good numbers, along with decent diversity this week. The sparrow migration has [...]
WPBO's third Ash-throated Flycatcher I'm just going to start by acknowledging that flipping my schedule from night to day, plus some technical issues on my part has me playing catch up on blogging. There's nothing for it at this point but to just jump in. There have already been some exciting vagrants this [...]
Although we continue to see a general slow down, we did band 24 juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls on August 11, which is a productive mid-August night. More recently, a warm-weather system has settled over us, and the numbers have been dropping night by night. The forecast calls for this system to linger a few [...]
We experienced the first real slow down of the summer this past week, including our first night with no owls. It's not unexpected for the owls to slow down significantly at this time of the year. However, the weather conditions have not been good recently, leaving us wondering if the migration is winding down [...]
Varying weather conditions have created some stops and starts to the owl migration recently, but overall it was another productive week. The few adults we are still catching are in various stages of molt. The one pictured in this blog has dropped its tail feathers. You can see the fluffy, white undertail coverts poking [...]
Although we are still catching the occasional adult Northern Saw-whet Owl (NSWO), the juveniles have effectively taken over. Since our last post, we have banded 107 juvenile NSWO and just three adults. We had two severe storm fronts come through this past week, and the juveniles were really moving between those two systems. During [...]
