Pointe LaBarbe, St. Ignace, MI
Night of September 28th, 2016
After three nights off due to high winds and heavy rains, we were finally able to open nets last night. It was a beautiful, calm night with an awesome display of Northern Lights around one o’clock in the morning and lots of shooting stars all night. Winds were cooperative with a slight breeze gusting out of the North, and we banded a total of 14 Saw-whets! 10 were female, 3 males, and 1 unknown. Almost all of the birds were hatch year birds, with one female being aged as an after second year bird. We also had our first bat of the season in one of the nets around three o’clock in the morning. It’s always so awesome to see such an elusive animal up close, though I was glad to have leather gloves for extracting it out of the net!
