20 October 2024

Week 3 at Petit Manan Point’s Project Owlnet Banding Station is complete! And better yet, we have reached the glorious achievement of 200 saw-whets!! We’ve officially surpassed last season’s numbers, and while doing that experienced what I would consider a solid “big night”.

The beginning of the week felt like a slow, drawn out wait for owls. While catching no birds for 4 days, we experienced rain and strong winds. Some of us even had to collapse our tents, but at least we got a kind of weekend off thanks to 2 days of not opening nets due to unsafe conditions for birds. We spent our time amping ourselves up for what we expected to be a metaphorical pile of owls that were stuck up north, waiting to come down to us once the storm and winds passed.

Wednesday was the night we expected to be a big night, but the winds were once again a little too strong and a little too west for the crowd we were expecting. We got 2 earlier on in the night, but they mostly started to come in after midnight – 17 of them, in fact! So that was 19 more owls under our belt. Aaron Coolman (2021’s Resident Bander and the graduate student who trained us to put Motus nanotags on saw-whets for his Master’s Project) also migrated from the station right from when we closed the nets early Thursday morning, off to his home banding station. The conditions for Thursday night looked even better than Wednesday, and finally the skies delivered!! We got a whopping 55 saw-whets, which was personally my biggest night ever! With our hearty crew and gracious volunteers, I’m happy to say that we “crushed it”. 49 hatch-years and 6 adults. One of these hatch-years was actually a “foreign recapture”, meaning it was banded at another station earlier on this year! Thrilling. We were even able to get 3 more tags out, reaching half of our quota for the season. Ben and Nick, our dutiful volunteers for the night (thank you!) also heard a Short-eared Owl and a couple of Great Horned Owls throughout the night.

Friday night proved to be less exciting owl-wise, though we did have a few visitors come by to help out and see the owls. We expected a big night before it started, but once things got underway we looked at the radar and realized there was a strange band of chaotic winds north of us that seemed to block off bird migration, like a wall blocking our path. We got 9 birds before midnight, and held out until an hour before the usual closing time. Thankfully, one more bird came in at 1am. What’s so special about just one more bird, you might ask? Well, that was our 200th saw-whet of the season!! Having such a busy couple of days – between birds, tags, and visitors – the number really snuck up on me. Coco and Tracey – the station’s Research Assistants – were completely on top of it and both realized separately that this was indeed the 200th. And that was our week, as Saturday night brought south winds and no birds.

On the topic of weather/sky conditions, it might be worth noting that the full moon has coincided with peak migration. While it sounds picturesque, it’s actually the other reason why our numbers are not as high as we’d like. Owls may be migrating right now, but a full moon means that they are more likely to be able to see our nets. Regardless, we are putting in the effort and making motions to catch as many as we can! I feel very thankful for my capable crew, and for all of the folks who are helping out and supporting us! Overall, we’re going with the flow of owls and winds. Can’t believe the season is already more than halfway done, but we’re holding out hope for more birds before it’s all finished.