Owl Banding

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 [...]

Well, we never got the late-season push of Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) this spring. We think it was one of the slowest ends to the spring season we've experienced; we'll see once we enter the data. Adding insult to injury, the mosquitoes the last few nights were the worst we have ever experienced in [...]

We've been able to band the last 17 nights, and things have really slowed down over that period. In the past week, we banded 18 Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO), eight of those were on May 20, and we got skunked last night for the first time since April 20. The Long-eared Owls just turned [...]

Last week we mentioned entering the tail-end of the Long-eared Owl (LEOW) migration this spring — when the adult numbers drop off and many of the previous year's young come through. Although young LEOW outnumbered adults 19:6 this past week, their overall numbers are low this spring. We've also only banded three LEOW in [...]

As they often do, the owls have kept us guessing this spring. March, typically the most unpredictable part of the season, was relatively productive for Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO). Then NSWO migration peaked a bit earlier than usual during the second week of April when we also had our first push of Long-eared Owls [...]

There seem to be times in every field season when you feel you are just along for the ride. They aren't always the busy times but are actually often some of the slower times. This past week was definitely one of those times when we felt we just needed to control the things we [...]