At the beginning of MSRW’s 2020 fall owl-banding season back in September, we speculated on the number of owls we might catch. A good year would be 400 Northern Saw-whet Owls and several Long-eared Owls. We have greatly exceeded all expectations. Thursday night we captured our 600th saw-whet, a record for the fall banding season.
And on Wednesday night, we captured our 10th long-eared owl, the first time that double-digit numbers have been captured in a fall banding season.
And if that wasn’t enough, Friday morning, while I was at the banding trailer banding a saw-whet, a beautiful Ruffed Grouse flew into a net.
Great times at Point LaBarbe!
Owl-banding totals September 18th through October 29th:
Northern Saw-whet Owl: 606
Long-eared Owl: 10
Barred Owl: 2
Eastern Whip-poor-will: 1
Ruffed Grouse: 1
-Nancy Drilling, lead owl-bander
