Although the owls slowed down a bit since the last update, it was still a decent week. We banded 71 owls since our last post, which is pretty good considering the cold and windy conditions we’ve been experiencing.

We are so grateful for the help of our community during the spring. As we are halfway through the season, we would like to take a moment to thank our volunteers.

The recent nights have been fairly productive, with both species diversity and overall numbers increasing since our last update. Over the last nine nights 131 owls were banded – 61 saw-whets, 67 long-eareds, two barreds and the spring’s second boreal.

Although the owls have picked up a bit since our last post, their migration has remained significantly slower than normal for this time of the year. Owl numbers vary significantly from year-to-year, and it might simply be a down year, only time will tell.

We’ve been stuck in a bit of a state of limbo the last few weeks. Saw-whets have been moving for a few weeks now, but their migration here has remained sporadic and slow. Thankfully, we have had a couple of new arrivals on recent nights.

As we started the spring banding season on March 14, we assumed that our opportunity to tag a Snowy Owl with a Project Snowstorm transmitter this winter had come and gone.

It’s hard to believe that this spring marks my 25th, and Nova’s 22nd year of banding owls at Whitefish Point. Although owl banding at the Point started in 1966, it did not occur in March until we moved the start date from April 1 to March 14 in 2007. To say results in March have varied from year-to-year would be an understatement.

At the start of each spring, the first owl of the season is almost always a saw-whet owl. They typically are migrating through before other species and we have had some years where we’ve captured 200 in March. This may not be one of those years, because last night we did not see a single saw-whet owl. However, we were treated to a gorgeous Barred Owl instead!