Owl Banding

Nova Mackentley and I are thrilled to be back at WPBO for another spring owl banding season. It's still exciting to get back out in the woods at night to work with these amazing birds. As is often the case, the season's first week has hit us with some wintery conditions, but some owls [...]

Our season is officially finished here at the Point, and we are sad to see it end. The last week of banding really saw things slow down. Honestly, though, this is kind of how you want it. It is tough to close nets when you are still catching a lot of birds. In total, [...]

We are in the home stretch of the fall banding season here at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory. The season officially ends the night of October 30. This past week brought us a couple of weather days, as well as some owls. Northern Saw-whet Owls continue to pass through the Point, with our best night [...]

Since our last post, things have slowed down a little bit here in the owl banding world. While the birds are still showing up, they are not keeping us as busy as last week. The weather this past week also affected our banding ability and kept us closed for a couple of days. While [...]

Since our last blog post, we have been quite busy in the owl banding world. I had stated in the previous blog that we were hoping the change in weather at the start of this week would bring us some birds, and it definitely did that. For starters, let's talk about the Northern Saw-whet [...]

Since our last post, things have been a little slower. Unfortunately, on the night of Sept. 21, we were closed all night due to strong winds. The night of Sept. 22 only saw us with one Northern Saw-whet Owl. This bird came right before closing early in the morning of Sept. 23. We were [...]

Dana with her first Northern Saw-whet Owl. Hello all. We're just finishing up our first week of the 2022 fall owl banding season. Let us take a minute and introduce you to the fall 2022 owl banders. Tori Steely is returning for a third fall season of owl banding here at the [...]

As expected, things remained relatively slow this past week. That said, it was a little more productive than the previous week. Our nightly totals ranged from two to seven owls. Of the 31 owls banded this week, 29 were juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO), one was an adult NSWO, and one was a Long-eared [...]

We experienced a wide variety of weather conditions this past week. Although periods of rain and high winds shut us down frequently, we also had periods of good weather that had us hoping that the owls would pick up again. Unfortunately, things have remained slow, with nightly totals ranging from one to seven owls [...]