31 December 2024

With 2024 coming to a close, we’re wrapping up the year with one final blog post! 

First, to quickly summarize our final week of the season. Week 6 here at Petit Manan Point’s Project Owlnet Banding Station felt like new and exciting territory, going later into November than last year. We felt like we were inching closer and closer to reaching over 300 saw-whets for our season, and another Boreal or Barred felt like a solid possibility. The beginning of the week started off with us switching our human clocks to Eastern Standard Time – which we’ve been using in our data this whole time, referring to it as “Eastern Bird Time” – with the comforting idea that we’ll simply get to live in bird time for the rest of the winter. With how delightful the season was, it was a lovely mindset to carry into the darkest parts of the year.

November 4th – early on in the week – turned out to be quite the night. In fact, it was our second highest saw-whet night of the season! It certainly felt like an active and busy night for everyone out there, with porcupines trundling through the brush, coyotes calling in the distance, and (suprisingly) a grouse drumming out in the field. A Barred Owl even made an appearance while we were sitting out at the net, but thankfully left our saw-whets alone as far as we could tell. The night in total brought us 30 hatch-years and one second-year, pushing us above 300! This was thrilling, considering at one point we weren’t sure we’d make it above this number. It also was especially rewarding to get at this point in the season, as we wouldn’t have gotten this many birds if we didn’t stay this late into November. 

The rest of the week was less in our favor, but it was good to see and recognize the gradual trickle down of birds, which reflected migration slowing. Throughout the week and around unfavorable weather, four more birds flew into our nets. One notable cheeky hatch-year decided to perch on our mist-net pole guylines, but rewarded our patience by flying into the net during the last few minutes that we were open! On the last night that we were open, November 7th, the very last bird of the season flew off into the starry night sky before we even realized it would be the last saw-whet we’d all see…until next year, that is. 

With that final week, our grand total for the season was 313 Northern Saw-whet Owls! Additionally, we caught 2 Barred Owls and 1 glorious Boreal Owl. Out of our 313 Saw-whets, 3 were previously banded: one here at this location as a hatch year 5 years ago, another as a 2024 hatch year at a different station, and one in late April 2024 as a second year near Mackinaw City, MI. 236 were female, 24 were male, and 53 were of unknown/indeterminable sex. 2 were after hatch years, 16 were after second years, 26 were second years, and 270 were hatch years. We got a good amount of numbers in each of these categories, but overall it confirmed what we expected for a peak year: lots of female hatch years born earlier on this year.

While some bad weather during peak migration and many nights of southwest winds thwarted our hopes for a record-breaking season, 2024 still had the 3rd highest capture count in the last 10 years. Staying open into the first week of November allowed us to catch 41 birds we wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. We were also able to deploy 15 Motus nanotags on Saw-whets as part of Aaron Coolman’s master’s project. So far, 9 of these birds have been picked up at other Motus stations.

Living and working on Petit Manan Point, we got to wake up (in the mid-afternoon) to the sounds of Black-bellied Plovers, bluebirds, and gulls. On nights with north winds, we could hear the chips of migrating songbirds overhead, porcupines squeaking in the woods, coyotes baying, and Saw-whets calling in the trees around us. We got to see the northern lights twice, with sheets of red and green across the sky, and had many nights of clear skies and bright stars, plus great views of a comet. People doing great work for wildlife across the state visited the station, and shared their normal sleeping hours and their bird-joy with us again and again. We are so deeply appreciative of everyone who volunteered with us, visited, brought us baked goods, taught us, and provided us with places to stay throughout the season. This work would not be possible nor nearly as fun without all of you. Thank you all for your support, kindness, and attention!

• Juliana Ramirez