The owls still haven't arrived....

Last night I closed the nets at 22:15 (a little bit early...), after having them open for over three hours. No wind, the nets hung beautifully still. The full moon was out last night, but there was significant cloud cover, and there are still many leaves on the trees so shadows were cast on the nets. In the last 5 previous years, this is our peak weekend.

A seemingly ideal night for owls...

And yet no one hit the net. We didn't even hear any owls around.

Since my last post on October 2nd we have added 4 more owls, to a lackluster showing of 7 owls in total. A boring season so far.

We had friends Theo and Karen Kolkman out to check out the banding on Saturday and managed to atleast catch a single owl for them at 23:10. Here's Theo examining the owl.

The forecast has a few NW wind evenings coming up here and the temperature is dropping, so maybe, just maybe the owls will begin to move through our area. If not, I've got no idea as to what has happened to them this year.

Stay tuned...

Northern Saw-whet Banding 2011

Our first saw-whet owl of 2011

On Tuesday September 20th we pulled out the old nets and got the net lanes cleared in excited anticipation for our 6th year of banding here at Saw-whet Acres! Six years!... I can't believe we've been doing this for six years now.

2010 was a our lowest overall total captures in the 5 years we'd been banding here, so we have high hopes that 2011 will be better.
So far not so....

Since opening on the 20th, our nets have been open for 8 evenings and only captured 3 owls. This is significantly lower than another other year. Here are the numbers from the first day of the season, to October 1st, over the last 5 years.

2006 - 8 nights open - 42 owls
2007 - 8 nights open - 22 owls
2008 - 8 nights open - 49 owls
2009 - 5 nights open - 11 owls
2010 - 6 nights open - 29 owls
2011 - 8 nights open - 3 owls....

My guess as to why the migration has been so slow is the unseasonally warm, or I should say hot weather. This last week we have had up to 29 degrees Celscius on a number of days. The owls just don't seem to be moving yet. With this warm weather we have strong southerly winds, which I believe slows down the birds. The other option is they simply take a different path that is with the wind...

We'll just have to see how things progress this month....
Stay tuned.

Sometimes you can read a band on a living birds leg!

Hi all,
One of the most exciting things for me as a birdwatcher/bird bander is finding a healthy living bird with a band on its leg.

If you have ever seen a songbird with a band on its leg, I would say good luck reading that band with binoculars or a spotting scope! Only a really cooperative bird is going to sit there until you read that band. It is difficult enough reading the number of a size 0A band in the hand!!

At this time of year, Mallards and Wood Ducks begin staging in the Waterfowl Park Display Ponds (which is right across from the Conexus Art Centre, in Regina). There can be up to 800 ducks in there at this time of year. When I go in to feed our injured captive waterfowl flock (snow geese, mute swans, Canada Geese, ducks, etc), all these other birds come over to enjoy the grain we put out. These ducks are so bold that they will come up to feed even when you are sitting 2 meters away.

This is a perfect time to watch for banded birds. A Mallards band is big enough that you can actually read the digits on it! So I was delighted to see atleast 4 birds carrying bands on their legs the other day. Out came the binos.

This male Mallard was one of the birds that had a band on his leg, as you can see. I was able to read off his band number - 1667-59235. Then I rushed back to the office to submit the data to http://www.reportband.gov/ and discover the info on this bird.

It turns out this bird was banded 7 km east of Mirror, Alberta on July 28, 2004!
It was aged as an After Hatch Year (meaning it was atleast 1 year old at the time, but we don't know if it was any more, could be 1, 5, or older we just can't tell). Regardless this bird was atleast 8 years old! He has done pretty good. Below is a copy of the Certificate of Appreciation USGS and CWS send you when you submit a band recovery. This is for the mallard above.

I also read the bands off of two other Mallards. Last year Lorne Scott and I banded about 20 Mallards in the Display Ponds on September 20, 2010. The two other banded birds were actually two of these birds. Back in the Display Ponds 364 days later!

Remember check those birds for bands! Every little piece of information can help understand more about these birds!

I'm still alive!

Hi everyone!

Apparently its been a while since I have posted here! My how time flies.
The birds are starting to come back!! I received a report today that Prairie Falcons are back at their traditional nest site in SW Saskatchewan, that Golden and Bald Eagles are being seen in the province and that Ferruginous Hawks are also coming home!!
How exciting is that!

Unfortunately, my long absence from the blog here has been a result of my lack of internet connection at home still.
But now with birds on their way home, I'm sure I'll be posting more often from work.

Just wanted to address some of the weird comments that have been posted here. Please know I do not support these anonymous comments that have been posted. I have deleted them all and hope that they do not continue. Please feel free to post on the blog if you have a legitimate comment regarding my blog.

I have begun receiving some band recoveries for the last two years of banding!! I've got a couple of Ferruginous Hawk recoveries in some neat places. I will hopefully post these results next week! Stay tuned!

Its a Turkey Vulture with a green tag!!!

Last week my banding buddy, Kelly Kozij from Weyburn, sent me an email of a photo he had received of a large black bird with a green tag on its wing.
Well what do you know, it was a young Turkey Vulture with a green wing tag! How exciting is that!!

Deanne Miller-Jones initially saw the bird as it perched on the top of a light pole in her farm yard near Radville, SK, on Oct 15. Deanne snapped a few photos of the bird, but wasn't completely sure what she was looking at. After the email was passed around a bit it became clear that this was one of the Turkey Vultures tagged by Stuart Houston's crew this summer! Can you make out the tag on the bird below?

Deanne has graciously allowed me to post her photos here. Thanks Deanne!

The bird remained on the light pole for the entire night and departed the next morning around 10:45 AM.

After consulting with Stuart Houston, I found out that this bird, A88, was one of the last birds his crew tagged this fall. It was tagged NW of Hagen on the 30th of August, 2009. It was one of two young vultures found in the attic of an old shed. This nest site was used in 2004 and 2005, but apparently not again until 2009.

The distance from the original tagging site and Deanne's farm was 385 km. Deanne's keen eye is a example of how citizen's can assist in a research program. Without Deanne's report of this bird, this information would not have made it to Stuart and we couldn't have learned what we have learned (ie. that this bird has survived to now, survived the 4 inches of snow that was here for a few days, is still in Saskatchewan, traveled this far this quickly or slowly..., etc). Thanks Deanne for your report and thanks to Stuart Houston for the information regarding this bird.

A recapture!

With only about 28 Northern Saw-whet Owls captured to date, we still did manage to net this little guy on the evening of Oct 12. The exciting part about this bird was that it was already wearing a little aluminum band!!

After submitting the data to the recovery website, (www.reportband.gov) I learned that this little guy was banding in Ontario, on Sept 22, 2007!! But that is all the detail I know at this point.

Two years ago I captured a bird from Thunder Cape Bird Observatory which is just east of Thunder Bay. The band number was only 400 bands away from the band number of this guy, so this bird likely was first banded at TCBO! This will be the second owl I have captured from their site! I don't know if this is the location where the bird was actually banded but this is my guess. Time will tell.

Looking at the molt pattern on the wing, we aged this bird as an After-Second-Year bird. You can see the different feather generations I have marked on the wing.

I will keep you posted if I find out any more information.