Snow, high winds and frigid temps have settled into the Finger Lakes so we reluctantly brought our fall owl migration effort to a conclusion. We'll be trying on nights with decent weather but anything caught by now has to be considered wintering and not migrant. We caught 81 birds in all.
We operated between dark and 2300 on most nights with acceptable weather conditions. We did try an early AM night as well with no owls and kept the station open until 0200 on our best night (17 saw-whets banded and one Foreign). That totals at 36 nights and 771.5 net hours. The majority of owls were captured between 2000 and 2200. Only one was caught at 2300 and none beyond that. We banded 77 new saw-whets, had one repeat, 3 foreign recaptures (all from Prince Edward Pt, Ontario) and one gray phase Eastern Screech Owl. One of our first saw-whets was recaptured by one of Scott Weidensaul's stations directly south of us in PA. Of the 77 total, 16 were SY, 4 AHY, and 5 ASY (one probable TY). Eleven were male of which 3 were adults and we had three of unknown sex. That's 32% adult, 81% female and 14% male saw-whets. The screech owl was an adult, probable female. Our measure of efficiency was 10.49/100 net hours. This was our first real attempt at Saw-whets and we think it a success. Up until now the conventional wisdom was that very few Saw-whets passed through the central Finger Lakes of NY. We strongly believe otherwise and hope to repeat the effort next fall. It's so easy to fall in love with these creatures. J&S -- John and Sue Gregoire Field Ornithologists Kestrel Haven Avian Migration Observatory 5373 Fitzgerald Road Burdett,NY 14818-9626 Website: http://www.empacc.net/~kestrelhaven/ "Conserve and Create Habitat" -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
