It occurred to me while driving home in upstate, New York - I've been seeing fewer road-kill E. Screech Owls lately.
It used to be a fairly regular, albeit unfortunate, occurrence to see a dead Screech Owl alongside the road. I would often stop to check the color morph and to see if any were banded, or if any were salvageable for science/education. It's a crude census method - the more animals, the more road-kills. You see that in the boon years of squirrels, skunks, and other critters. And we saw that a few years ago with the winter incursion of Barred Owls - a spike in the number of road-kill Barred Owls throughout the northeast USA. Nowadays, I hardly see any E. Screech Owls alongside the road. I should be glad about that. But does it indicate a more ominous note? Owls are hard enough to census as it is. But could my anecdotal observation of fewer road-kills indicate fewer E. Screech Owls out there? Rich Guthrie New Baltimore, The Greene County, NY -- Richard Guthrie -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
