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. We also recaptured a long-eared that we banded here in spring 2024. Given how slow the saw-whets have been so far this season, it’s nice to see the long-eared migration begin to pick up.

While always excited when we enter the peak period for long-eared migration, we are particularly excited this spring. Our first long-eared transmitters have made it out of production and are now in the hands of our science advisor Dave Brinker. We are hoping, as is Dave, that he will be able to be here for the first Long-eared Owl to be fitted with a transmitter at Whitefish Point. You can learn more about this project here. So far we have funding for one of the transmitters and are close to being able to fund all three for this spring, hopefully we will have more details about that in the next couple of weeks.

We also want to express our gratitude to some of our local supporters. The transmitters we are using can only be programed through a computer running Windows 10 or 11. Nova and I only have Mac computers, but a local couple very generously donated a computer running Windows 11. We are continuously amazed by the generous support that our small local community extends to our organization.

A couple of this week’s owls elicited some “wows” out of us.

This saw-whet had dark brown tones to its facial disc and beautiful golden eyes.

This long-eared had some of the longest ear tufts we’ve ever seen.

Although ruffed grouse are fairly common around the Point, this is only the second one we have ever caught during owl banding.

Banding Totals:

Saw-whet: 135 banded & 10 recaptured

Long-eared: 79 banded & 1 recaptured

Barred:3

Boreal: 2

Late April Update

Mid-April Update