Well, folks, gratitude is the best way to start anything, but if there are words that adequately express the gratitude I’ve been feeling since Birdathon, I haven’t found them yet. Thank you. This past weekend, 14 teams from all over Michigan came up to Chippewa County to spent 24 hours looking and listening for as many bird species as they could find while raising money for the owl research conducted by Friends of Whitefish Point.

Although it has recently been relatively slow for owls, they have picked up a bit again and it has been a busy time for us since our last update. We held our first Friends of Whitefish Point event and hosted a tour led by a former crew mate from our time at WPBO. The owls cooperated enough for the 30+ visitors we had at the owl banding over the last few days to have a great experience.

This past week started off with a night of just two owls, then a night of three. We were ready for the owls to really go into the lull we experience at this time of the season, but they actually picked up a little bit again in recent nights.

Although the owls have slowed down a bit, it was still a productive week. We had a decent number of owls come through, including a few exciting birds that were already banded.

The owl banding this past week proved to be very productive. Over the last six nights, we banded 227 owls and recaptured eight more that were previously banded.

The excitement we have continued to feel this past week is honestly hard to put into words. We’re still falling more and more in love with the new owl banding station as we continue to customize it to be more functional. We’ve also been able to start making changes in the new banding area to improve our captures as we become more familiar with it and as the snow levels recede.

We have two events this spring, for those of you who are interested in visiting the area and learning more about birds and migration! You can come to our Birdathon in mid-may and/or register to visit the owl banding station anytime between now and the last weekend in May.

The trailer for our new banding station has arrived and is in place! The migration has been a bit slow, but we have added two more species for the season. The weather has been difficult, but we are feeling hopeful that spring is just around the corner.