Hey everyone! We are back with a week three update! With the weather getting colder we are catching more owls. We have banded/recaptured a total of 191 Northern saw-whet owls. We have banded a total of 4 Barred Owls. We are also excited to announce we caught 1 Long-eared owl. Our busiest night now was October 10th and we caught a total of 23 saw-whets.
Pictured: Hatch year male Northern saw-whet owl
If you tuned in to our last blog and had a guess on those thrushes, here are the answers: the bird on the left was a Hermit Thrush, and the bird on the right is a Gray-cheeked thrush.
Today we wanted to dive a bit into the two birds MSRW catches regularly but in smaller quantities the Long-eared owl, and Barred owl. Starting with the Barred owl (Strix varia) which are much larger than saw-whets, weighing between 470-1050 g with a wingspan of 99-110 cm. Barred owls are mottled brown and white on their back, and boast white breasts with brown streaking, their eyes are dark brown, and their bills are yellow. They are very vocal and have a recognizable call that often sounds like ‘who cooks for you’. These owls inhabit mature forests of all kinds, and can be found throughout Michigan. They nest in cavities like saw-whets and bluebirds, and have clutches of up to 5 eggs. Barred owls feed on basically anything they can get their claws on including voles, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, mice, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates, and birds (including other owls). These owls are highly successful predators and have begun to move west where they are causing problems with spotted owl conservation because they outcompete the endangered spotted owls for resources.
Pictured: Hatch-year Barred Owl
American Long-eared owls (Asio Otus) which are smaller than Barred Owls but larger than Saw-whets weigh about 220-435 g with a wingspan of 90-100 cm. They are fairly dark with buff faces, long slender facial disks, a mottled brown, black, and buff bodies, and of course the tell-tale ear tufts. They are very vocal and the one pictured below gave us quite the cacophony of sounds often hissing and snapping at us. Other sounds include a low whoop, but they can do catlike screeches and doglike barks. They are found all over the US, western populations tend to have more orange faces than eastern ones. They roost in densely forested areas and hunt in more open spaces. In winter, they roost communally and up to a dozen at a time can be seen together. For nests, they use stick nests abandoned by other birds and a female can lay 2 to 10 eggs. Their diet consists of mostly small mammals such as voles, deer mice, and pocket gophers but also eat small birds, bats, lizards, and snakes.
Pictured: Hatch year female Long-eared owl
