63 Saw-whet Owls in 9 Hours
After a full day of banding songbirds, Ed and I stayed up almost all night catching owls. Conditions couldn’t have been better: clear, calm, and cold with no moon. Though we have caught a few owls every night this week, last night was the best yet – 63 saw-whets! We finally turned into bed at 4:00 am, slept an hour and a half, and headed out at dawn for another field day of banding songbirds. It never stops…
Saw-whet Owls are just unimaginably cute. I can’t get over it. Those big eyes and soft, soft feathers get me every time. And saw-whets are normally very hard to find; before banding them here, I had seen exactly two in my whole life. Handling 63 in one night blows my mind!
These little guys are definitely worth losing a little sleep for. Okay, a lot of sleep, but hey!
Well lucky you; finding all of those Saw-Whets….and just in time for Halloween! Seems fitting!
Where do these Saw-whets end up? There are similar movements at Boise Ridge in Idaho and in coastal Oregon, although the latter has had little banding coverage.
There is an article in the American Birding Associate blog that you might want to read that Noah wrote about his catching of these owls:
http://blog.aba.org/
Hey Diane, Thanks for posting the link!
Yes, thanks Diane, for posting the link to the aba blog! Fascinating reading about Noah’s 63 Saw-whet Owls. Two winters ago, a Saw-whet took up residency in one of our Wood Duck boxes that is in sight of the barn. Cutest thing imaginable to see it poking its head out during the day whenever I made too much noise. It would wait until I’d quit whatever I was doing that was disturbing its sleep, then duck back down and, I presume, go back to sleep.
Noah, I just finished reading your Penguin book. You packed a lot of information about Antarctica and penguins in your adventure story. It was great fun to read. Your Buckethead chapter was hilarious. I read it out loud to my husband and we both laughed ourselves silly. You did a great job and I look forward to your next book.
Thanks for the nice comments, Linda! Glad you enjoyed the book. I think another one (or two) is in the works… ;)