We have some exciting and unique events planned for this fall, if you will be up in the Paradise area, you should consider joining us!

The past week was the warmest and wettest of the season, including some torrential rain storms. One storm dumped almost 5 inches on Whitefish Point. Unsurprisingly, it was slow for owls, but the juvenile saw-whets continued at a steady trickle. Also, we have 2 upcoming programs this weekend for Blueberry Festival!

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.

Given that we have yet to have a single night’s banding total hit double-digits, the nights have remained surprisingly steady. Over the past week we banded 38 Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) and three Long-eared Owls (LEOW). Of the 38 NSWO, 34 were juveniles and four were adults.

This week we banded the 100th owl of the summer, including the season’s first Long-eared Owl. It was actually on this date, July 21, 2006 that I found a roosting long-eared that led to start of the summer owl research at Whitefish Point.

We just completed the second week of the summer season and the owls have been slow but steady. I’m happy to have been joined by Holly Erickson, who will be my banding partner for the season, at the start of the week. The juvenile Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) have picked up a bit over the last few nights, with 14 being banded over the last five nights. Last night was the first night that juveniles outnumbered adults, with five juveniles and four adults banded.

We started the 20th season of summer owl banding at Whitefish Point on July 1. We never quite know what to expect at the start of the summer season. The vast majority of the owls that have been banded during the summer have been juvenile plumage Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO). The number of juveniles banded each year varies significantly with the natural 4-5 year breeding cycle of NSWO.

Every banding season, we capture a number of owls that are already banded. These captures are always very exciting for us, it’s like a little feather-wrapped gift, and we love anticipating whether it is a bird we banded in a previous year, or from another part of the country! This spring, we had 45 encounters: 41 saw-whets (NSWO), three long-eareds (LEOW) and one barred (BAOW).