The night started off looking good, but before too long the winds kicked up and forced me to close the nets at midnight. In fact, the winds were worse last night than they were the night before, which left the nets full of leaves and tangled in nearby conifers.
I did, however, start off with three NSWO at 2100 hours; two males and one female (all after second year birds). At the time of said captures, the wind was around 8mph and rapidly began to build leaving the nets void of owls for the following few hours. By midnight, the northeast (originally predicted to be east) wind had climbed to 18 mph-gusting to 23-requiring me to close the banding station.
NOAA is predicting winds to be east at 5-15 mph with gusts as high as 25 mph tonight. We’ll give it a go for a while and see what tonight brings.
Here are some lovely images from a week ago taken by Kathy Germain:
