MSRW News

Sometime early in the summer Ed Pike asked me if I would be interested in coordinating the tagging of Monarch butterflies as they passed Point LaBarbe during the 2020 fall migration to their wintering grounds in Mexico.  I was a bit hesitant as first, but when I mentioned it to Laurie, the retired science teacher,...

Observing Raptor migration at a hawk watch site can be an amazing spectacle, with kettles of hawks and eagles soaring overhead, eliciting “oohs” and “aahs” from humans present. In the fall, all we know is that the birds are heading south somewhere, after leaving breeding grounds to the north somewhere. Modern satellite tracking devices are...

Nov 9th was my last full day of counting, as Nov 10th was an overall miserable weather day. So with the season coming to an official end, I thought it would be great to break down this record year of waterbird migration. From Aug 20th, 2020 until Nov 10th, 2020 I counted 79 days and...

Nancy and I have had quite the season here on Point LaBarbe, and have caught more owls than we ever could have imagined we would catch! The MSRW fall average is 200-300 Northern saw-whet Owls captured, and a few Long-eared Owls if they’re lucky. For us to have caught 648 Northern Saw-whet Owls, 11 Long-eared...

I have to apologize for the missing blogs, there has been some technological glitches and WiFi errors here on my end. However, here is an update on what the November season has looked like so far. Long-tailed Ducks had moved through the area fairly consistently all throughout late October, but had begun to trickle in...

Its been a record-breaking year at MSRW’s Point LaBarbe owl-banding station but all good things must come to an end. Starting Halloween night, we noticed a marked decrease in the number of Northern Saw-whet Owls landing in our nets. Part of the reason has been some sub-optimal migration conditions – especially winds and a bright...