First Transmitter and Birdathon
Although the owls have slowed down during recent nights, we are excited about the recent progress made in our new Long-eared Owl study. Thanks to our generous supporters, over $10,000 was raised to fully fund the first three transmitters. After being lucky enough to have Dave Brinker and Hannah Toutonghi visit to help us prepare for this project, we were able to deploy our first satellite transmitter last week. As the technology we are using is fairly new, we are among the first studies of this sort, and as far as we know the first one tagging migrant Long-eared Owls in North America.
On the evening of May 4, we released our first Long-eared Owl (LEOW) fitted with a Friends of Whitefish Point satellite transmitter. She is an adult female named Paradise in honor of our little town and the Paradise Area Community Foundation, who generously funded her transmitter through a grant.
Paradise. The first Long-eared Owl to be fitted with a satellite transmitter in our new research project. She may the first migrant long-eared to be fitted with a satellite transmitter in North America.
It’s been amazing to see the first two satellite data downloads from Paradise, who since leaving Whitefish Point has not continued northward. Her most recent data point was made eight days after being released at the Point, at which time she was about 50 miles to our southeast between the towns of Rudyard and Pickford (map below).
A map of Paradise’s movements since she left the Point on May 5, as revealed by her satellite transmitter.
For those familiar with the area here are some fun details of her travels. She left the Point on the night of May 5 and spent the day of May 6 sleeping on the north side of M-123 just west of town, not too far beyond the old quilt shop. On the night of the sixth she traveled about 20 miles southeast and spent May 7-10 about halfway between the Curly Lewis Highway and M-28, where she was south of Pendills Creek National Fish Hatchery and north of Smithers Winter Test Center. On the night of May 10, she traveled further southeast to an area along the border of the forest and agricultural fields between Rudyard and Pickford. As many of you will know, that is an area particularly known to birders for wintering Snowy Owls.
The recent weather has been more winter-like than spring-like since we released Paradise. Nighttime lows have dipped into the 20s on a couple of recent nights. It will be interesting to see if Paradise eventually moves north as spring progresses, or if she proves to be more of a local bird spending the summer in the UP. Our fingers are crossed that she continues to have safe travels and make regular connection to the satellite network during the coming weeks. We’re also hoping to get two more particularly healthy female long-eareds this spring to deploy with the remaining two transmitters.
Our first three satellite transmitters for the Long-eared Owl project.
Hannah testing the transmitter harness design.
An early “morning” training from Dave on programming the transmitters on a table covered with some of the needed supplies. Learning how to download and analyze the data involves quite a learning curve.
Birdathon is almost upon us!
If you have signed up to participate as a team and/or attend the celebration dinner in Paradise we are looking forward to a great weekend of birds and good company. Below is a preview of the Silent Auction items that will be available for bid during the dinner. If you would like to join us, there is still time, you can register here.