The Summer’s First Barred Owl
The slow yet steady pace of the owls has started to make this a relatively productive summer season. We’ve been able to band 35 out of the 36 nights this season, and have banded 186 owls and recaptured four previously banded owls. A highlight this week was the recapture of a Barred Owl that we originally banded this spring. This is just the fourth Barred Owl to be captured in the summer at Whitefish Point, and the first one that was a recapture. We also banded the first juvenile Long-eared Owl of the summer this week. This week, we also hit a major milestone for the summer owl banding at Whitefish Point when we banded juvenile saw-whet number 5,000. That is a number that is far exceeds any expectations Nova and I had when we started the summer owl banding at Whitefish Point in 2006. Thanks to our collaboration with the Northern Saw-whet Owl Connectivity Project, we were able to fit that owl with a transmitter that will hopefully provide some insight into its future travels.
The first Barred owl to be recaptured at Whitefish Point in the summer. As is typical for adult owl here at this time of year, it was looking particularly ragged due to being in heavy body molt. Photo by Holly Erickson.
Assistant owl bander Holly has has been exploring the use of the blacklight for other nighttime excitement:
"In addition to attracting moths, all sorts of cool critters light up under UV light! In between net checks, I've gone out to see what I can find. Crab spiders, orb weavers like the one pictured, caterpillars, moths, and grasshoppers have all been glowing! I took my black light out to the beach at the point to explore. While I expected driftwood and some rocks to glow, I was delighted to find some washed up fish lit up from several metres away!”
Blueberry Festival in Paradise is next weekend! The Friends of Whitefish Point has some amazing volunteers who will be staffing a table at the arts & crafts festival from Friday-Sun, 9-5pm. Come join in the fun and learn more about the current projects and events that are coming up soon. There is a moth night on August 15th with Susan & Mike Kielb, Chris & Nova will be giving a presentation at the Whitefish Township Library on August 16th all about the Owls of Whitefish Point and there are still a few nights to sign up to visit the owl banding: www.friendsofwp.org/visitowlbanding
