Fall owl banding at Point LaBarbe in St. Ignace began on September 17th and finished up on November 10th. Although we faced many nights of adverse weather, mainly heavy precipitation and fierce winds, we managed to open our nets for 38 nights this season. Throughout that time, 282 owls were captured. A total of 280 were Northern Saw-whet Owls (Aegolius acadicus), while one Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) and one Barred Owl (Strix varia) were also captured.
As suspected, the main movement of Saw-whets occurred in mid- October, more specifically from Oct 9th to Oct 24th. We managed to catch 126 owls in that time. Our best night occurred on Oct 13 when we captured a season best of 28 Saw- whets. A highlight from the season was capturing 16 Saw-whets that were already banded, which we call foreign recaptures. Two notable recaptures were: one Saw-whet from Fairfield, Ohio and another from Wabasha, Minnesota. We also had a recapture that was banded at Point LaBarbe in Oct 2014 and was aged at that time as an after second year (ASY) bird. We caught this bird October 11th 2017 and also aged it as an ASY. This means that this bird is at least 6 years old!
Another exciting development is that two owls we banded this fall have already been recaptured further south. One Saw-whet was banded by us on September 29th and was recovered on November 4th in Ridgway, PA, a journey over 600 miles from our St. Ignace location. Another Saw-whet we banded on October 13th was recaptured in Chesterton, IN on November 11th. This bird managed to fly over 375 miles in just under a month. Despite many nights of unfavourable weather, the fall 2017 owl banding season ended up being quite successful. Owl capture rates were unusually high last fall, yet we still managed to capture 282 owls this fall, the second most abundant yield since owl banding began at Point LaBarbe in 2014. This fall has been fantastic and thank you to everyone who kept up with our blogs. Until next time my fellow strigiphiles, good owling !
