Photo Phriday 162 - Owl Banding

Over the years, I've spent 100's of hours trying to understand northern owls, and their place in the system. I guess that any predator intrigues me. I've had many a day chasing after owls. Always a good time for my wife and I.



Lisa and I have banded 100s of boreal owls, trying to figure out their movements and their site fidelity to nesting spots.



The little boreal is one of my favorites. Nesting in the Lower-48 is uncommon. We had hundreds of active nests in Alaska.



The Great horned Owl is fairly common in the Lower-48 as it is in Alaska. We banded most of them as owlets still in the nest.



Adult northern hawk owls were fun to trap and band up north during their spring migration.



A couple of northern hawk owls just waiting to be trapped and banded.



Great gray owls were common and fairly easy to trap. Always regal.

Like those Great Grays. I have Pygmies here. Love watching them. They are quite tame. I can get close to them and they just stare at me. Ive seen them dive on mice in daytime.

Aren't those little pygmy owls neat? Here at the homestead we usually have pygmy owls, great-horned, and western screechs. Periodically, we have long-eared, flammulated, and saw-whets. Not often.

Jack

That sounds very good. I've always wanted to identify owls by hearing them. I do with Great Grays, screech and my wee Pygmies...but that's it, for certain.

I hear some big ones , only at dusk and in the night, calling to each other every year. The call is always the same, pitch, and cadence. They are larger because I've seen them fly at dusk. But I can't ID them.

I had a pygmy bump my window a couple years back, stunned himself a bit. I took him inside to warm up and see him up close. He stared at me and never struggled . I let him go and he was fine, all he did was hang around in the cedars all day and tease the chickadees. He stays basically all winter , every season.

I had a pic of me holding him that I took , but I can't find it ...

They stare right at you. I expect them to speak in terse tones at any moment !

Very cool post Jack, Thanks.

How did you catch the Boreals for banding? Inside the nest box?

I know when they were banding Saw-whets here they found that the males were more likely to return to the same boxes then the females which makes sense as it’s the males that pick the nesting location and try attracting a female.

We had a Snowy Owl hang out at the Landfill one year. He was very tame and pretty.

Was gifted a book called{What An Owl Knows} by Jennifer Ackerman. Used to have alot of barred owls but great horned owls pushed them out. Miss calling to barred and having them answer and come closer .

Yes, boreals were captured in nest boxes or were banded as young-of-the-year just before fledging. Great horned owls were banded in the nests. Great gray and n. Hawk-Owls were trapped as adults to band.

Jack

Dang all I see is linked images

Barred Owl watching the Bird Feeder at night

That is neat. Have you ever banded waterfowl?

After you band one how do you keep track of it? Or do you band a lot of them and hope when it dies someone reports finding a band?

Lots of barred owls here and a few of those little screech owls. Screech owls can sound like a human yelling at another human to me, just yelling something unintelligible. Catching snakes in prairie dog towns, those little burrowing owls are pretty cool. Never saw one of them here in east KS. Saw a pair of barn owls nesting here several years ago in a sandstone bluff on the Marais Des Cygne river. Every now and then river comes up above that bluff, it did that year. I think the adults survived. Never seen any barn owls since around here.

That's pretty cool