owl banding update 126 0wls and counting

Greetings friends of the night or perhaps friends of  the little owl know as the northern saw whet owl. This year's banding season has been interesting, perplexing, a little frustrating, and full of questions  about the movements of these little owls. It has also been a season of tweaking the process of having visitors to the marsh in an attempt at making the visit as fun for everyone as possible. I hope to get to all of these ideas in this blog so here goes.

With the substantial cold front that moved through at the beginning of September I was certain that we were going to have a quick and awesome start to the banding season. The cold front was soon replaced with warm night time temperatures and the migration seemed to stall . We caught our first owl on September  15th at 11:50 and after a week of banding had only captured  5 owls . I was shocked especially after hearing reports of over 100 owls being banded at Rocky Point Bird Observatory  in Victoria British  Columbia and knowing we had visitors soon to be visiting the marsh I was concerned about the status of owl banding this year at the marsh. The second week of banding was much better and we had some nights of 30  and 28 owls being banded which brings us to our current total of 126 owls being banded. Just to compare British Columbia banders are now at 326 for the season.

      Our success last week went in the face of what we usually experience with warm temperatures. Usually when we have warm temperatures we hardly catch any owls. They move on cold fronts and when I told a group of 50 owlers last Friday who were very hot in the "birdhouse" that we always do well when we have to put the wood stove on, someone responded "then put some wood in the stove!"  With the warmer temperatures we managed to catch enough owls to delight ort visitors but our best net check time has been the 4:00 am check.  I am really looking forward to some cold windless nights to see how many owls we can catch this week.

        The other thing we have been attempting to do is to get people to come out closer to the the 9:30 net check.  We have discovered that in order to run the research effectively  banders need some time to get organized and to carry out some of the routine items that need to be recorded or maintained or sometimes I just need sleep. So to this end we are starting to keep the gate shut at the entrance. We will open the gate between 8 30 and 9 when we are ready for visitors. We think this will help streamline the night and make the visit more enjoyable. One thing that it will do is help folks to make the night more efficient  we have had some nights when people show up for more than 2 hours before we start catching owls and some folks with little ones who had to leave just prior to a net check as the little ones were just played out. While I am excited that people are keen to see owls we need to help people know when to come closer to owl time  and everyone can enjoy the night much more . We are always looking forward to feedback on this  and everything we do at the marsh. I was checking out a website of an owl banding site in Wisconsin today and they limit the number of visitors to 38 and folks have to pay 15 bucks for a chance to come out. While that certainly helps the organization financially and limits the number of folks coming out I think we will keep with this system for the time being. Having visitors on Wednesday Friday and Saturday is providing us with nights to train volunteers on the off nights which is working out nicely. To find out more about volunteering check out the website.If you would like more information about our owl banding research please let us know . More news on owls to come. Murph