Good morning to our faithful MSRW readers, and welcome back to the weekly recap of the owls caught in Cheboygan State Park in our spring 2025 banding season. It been a beautiful week of intermittent rain and shine, as April is wont to do. The rain meant we took a couple half and full nights off, but we were still able to amass thirty-five owls. Twenty-eight of these were NSWO, and a surprising seven of them were Long-eared Owls!
My closing remark in last week’s post was a wistful hope we might catch an owl that was more rare than our NSWO and LEOW. We spoke of Short-eared owls, and Great Horned Owls and Great Gray Owls without any true expectations. Therefore I am all the more excited to tell you that this week, we caught TWO Boreal Owls!
MSRW has not caught a Boreal Owl at this site since 2009, and they have not caught more than one since 2005. Boreal Owls are an irruptive species, which means they do not migrate seasonally; their populations shift from place-to-place following their food supply. Their average range runs through most of central and southern Canada, stretching up into Alaska on the western coast of North America and down through parts of the western United States.
One morning this week we caught two LEOW at the same time. One was male and the other female, which gave us a great opportunity to show of the sexual dimorphism of this species. The female LEOW are generally larger, and have buffy ventral coverts. Males appear more pale both in the underwing and on the face.
We had access to a nice camera and controlled lighting this week, so we were able to grab some artistic shots of all our owls. This photo in particular shows off the rim of a NSWO’s facial disc. The shape of the feathers that make this disc funnel sound towards an owls ears. The way it channels air is one of the things that allows these owls to fly so quietly.
In addition to our owls, we have started to see migrating salamanders. We have found Yellow-spotted salamanders, Blue-spotted salamanders, and Eastern Newts.
Thats all for this week! Hopefully the weather clears and we are able to stay open more nights in future. We look forward to bringing you more owl news in the upcoming week. Thank you to all and we will see you in our next post!
