HI Folks,
There is a list-serve for saw-whet owl banders. According to
dozens of reports on this list-serve, for much of NY and PA and more,
the fall migration of saw-whets has been an incredible bust. We are well
past the peak time with very few birds. For my small banding effort, I
caught 27 birds last year and only 11 birds this year even though last
year I used two nets for 4 nights with a good audio speaker compared to
this year with 4 or 5 nets for generally longer hours each night on 11
nights. However, some stations located north of us have had average or
above average number of saw-whets.
Maybe most of the birds trickled by the banders around here and in
PA on nights or by some migration pathway that eluded banders, or there
may be many birds north of us that have stalled out on migration while
we get weeks of rain and warm winds from the south.
The weather prediction for Friday night looks OK, only the third
night that might rate that high in weeks, and I am thinking of trying to
band until 4 or 5 or 6 AM, if I had help.
It would be a handicap to me, to the catching and handling of the
birds, and to the accuracy of data processing if there were new people
coming in and out throughout the night and if people came for a look-see
for an hour or so. If, however, someone were willing to come for a 4 or
5 hr stretch, that would be helpful. Please, do not come for a quick
tour, which would be disruptive and distracting. Please do not come
without first contacting me offline as mentioned below.
Putting up nets starts at about 6 and the first shift would work
from 6 to 11, the second shift would work as long as there were owls
coming in to the net, maybe closing the nets at 5:00 AM and finishing
processing at 6:00.
Please respond OFFLINE to con...@ithaca.edu. I do need to be able
to control the number of people, should there be numerous, wacko
potential helpers.
Cheers,
John Confer
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