Owl Banding

After experiencing a nice stretch of productive weather conditions prior to our last post, the recent weather patterns have regularly slowed down migration, if not shut us down altogether. That said, we did have a few windows when Northern Saw-whet Owls were on the move between periods of high winds and snow. Most notably, [...]

When you're working with migratory birds at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory in mid-March, your efforts are naturally going to produce results that vary significantly from year to year. We experienced a relatively mild winter this year, and our early season efforts are paying off. Northern Saw-whet Owls have continued to come through in steady [...]

The owl banding season is coming to a close, and it started to feel like it this week. Nighttime temperatures dropped below freezing multiple times, and the rain that kept nets closed earlier this month has begun to turn to snow and sleet. The owls are still moving, but migration here at the Point [...]

After several nights off at the end of last week, we were excited to get back out and open nets this week. The owls did not disappoint! Our first net run of the week was also our most productive of the season. On top of that, it put us over 200 new saw-whets [...]

It’s been another windy week here at the Point! Another stretch of strong winds kept nets closed several of the past few nights. We had been averaging over 50 new Northern Saw-whet Owl banded each of the first three weeks of the season. We didn’t quite make it this week, but we came close! [...]

Well, our streak of good weather has come to an end. The beginning of October brought enough wind and rain to keep nets closed all or part of about half of the nights this past week. Fortunately, it seems the owls are still migrating in decent numbers as we had yet another night of [...]

Welcome back! It’s been an exciting week since our last update. The week was full of season firsts, starting with our first Long-eared Owl! That same night (Sept. 22), we also caught our first bird with retained juvenile plumage. This particular bird was starting to show the streaky brown and white breast feathers seen [...]