Three species in one night
It was an exciting week for us here at the station. While the weekly numbers were not the highest of the season, we did have great species diversity and even a very exciting visitor! We are nearing the end of our season and are hoping that we can continue to get more owls as the nights progress. There were a few nights this week that the wind did not treat us well and had us closing nets early, but overall it was a pretty good week.
Excited about owls-a glimpse inside the banding station during the evening
Our manifestations of an exciting week finally came to fruition on Saturday with our third highest night of the season- 13 owls! Although this is nowhere near a record high for the station, Liv and I were thrilled after a few long weeks of owls just trickling in. To start the excitement of the night, we caught our 5th Long-eared Owl of the season on the first net check! We were able to sex this owl as a female due to the buffiness of the underwing. All of the other Long-eared Owls have been classified as unknown sex.
An example of the buffy coloration on the underside of a long-eared owl, indicating female.
Our second net check started with high hopes but after checking around half of the nets with no luck, we started to become slightly disheartened. As we approached our Boreal Owl nets, we noticed there was something in the net; our first Boreal Owl of the season! Our excitement was through the roof at the sight of this owl, Liv and I had low hopes for banding a Boreal this season since our time here is running out quicker than we would like. As the night continued, we got Northern Saw-whet Owls on just about every net check which was thrilling.
First Boreal Owl of the fall season
We have high hopes for the rest of our season here and hopefully, we continue to have an increase in numbers each night. Working with the owls is such a treat and I don’t think Liv and I could get tired of it.
- Bridget Schmidt, Fall Assistant Bander
Season Totals
Northern Saw-whet Owls- 130
Long-eared Owls- 5
Barred Owls- 1
Boreal Owls- 1
