12 October 2024

Week 2 of Project Owlnet here at Petit Manan Point, and oh boy was it eventful! It certainly feels like the project is getting into full swing, and a few of us had some exciting “firsts”. The biggest thing to note is that we’re at a total of 115 Northern Saw-whet Owls for the season! We’re quickly approaching last year’s season total (139), and at this point it’s looking like any day now we’re going to surpass that number.

The week started off exciting with Sunday bringing a 14 bird night, but also our very first Barred Owl! We thankfully had some experienced folks on site, so between Adrienne Leppold and Dave Brinker we were able to get a great demonstration of how to extract, process, and release. This was a much larger bird than this crew is used to – with significantly larger talons – so it was thrilling to get familiar with this species and how to handle them! This one was a male hatch-year that was likely dispersing from where it fledged, weighing 575g. For comparison, our saw-whets generally weigh between 75g and 120g.

After a night of rain and closed nets on Monday, we opened up our nets Tuesday and caught 21 saw-whets – our biggest night so far. It would have been 22, but the first bird we caught was a actually the last bird we banded on Sunday night! As a bird that we banded at this station already, we list it in our data as a “local” recapture and don’t add it to the tally. Very interesting that she stuck around through the storm. Aaron Coolman also arrived on Tuesday, along with the Motus nanotags that he has been putting on saw-whets for his graduate work. We lucked out with 3 adults out of the ones that we caught, and we were able to put tags on 2 of them. At the end of the night we dug into the apple pie we made the night before, decorated in honor of our saw-whets. 

The rest of the week has brought varying amounts of rain, steady winds from the south/west, and too strong of winds from the northwest. In regards to migration, generally north and northwest winds are good, while south and west winds are bad. Too strong of winds are also not particularly good, as saw-whets are not the strongest fliers. That being said, we haven’t gotten a ton of birds throughout the rest of the week: about 2 to 4 each night. We’ve been putting on nanotags when we can, which has been a fascinating and engaging process. It’s inspiring to think of all of the data we’re likely going to get out of these tags and these birds along their journey. There’s still so much to learn, and at the same time we’re right here, out in the field, putting in the work to expand our knowledge regarding this species. Of course, the birds are putting in the real work here, flying hundreds of miles to do what they do! It’s an honor to get to be here working with them and supporting Aaron’s research, as well as that of Project Owlnet.

Our week – or at least the days before this blog post – ended with another thrill: a second Barred Owl! They continue to fascinate me, especially when we unexpectedly catch them on a low saw-whet night. We’ve had folks sitting at the net in hourly shifts all week to look out for Barred Owls and extract saw-whets as they come into the nets, so this bird really affirmed to me that we’re doing the right thing there. Aaron helped to extract this one, and I processed it. My first time really getting my hands on a Barred Owl, and WOW. They’ve got a totally different feel compared to saw-whets, and this hatch-year female was certainly feisty! Not only was she very bitey, but she also was significantly larger than our last one. She weighed a whopping 699g, which was 124g heavier than the male we caught a few days earlier!

And that was our week! New birds, tiny tags, late nights. We were also lucky enough to catch the northern lights throughout the week. They were the best I’ve ever seen personally, and we really got to soak it in between staying up late and not having many birds while the sky was lighting up. Thanks to everyone who helped out this week, and wish us luck with all the owls we’ll likely get once all of this wind and rain passes!

Fair winds and following owls,

Juliana Ramirez