Uninvited guest

Last night we captured and banded 33 Northern Saw-whet Owls. Two of them had already been banded. Since the Bird Banding Lab is currently off line we couldn’t find out from where they were originally banded. Brings our total for the first week to 75.

We also had an uninvited guest. At the 3:30 AM net check Michael found a flying squirrel captured in one of the nets along with 5 owls. Without the proper gloves to extract the squirrel he had to abandon the process and focus and getting the owls to the station for processing.

I hoped my gloves were sturdy enough and ventured to the net with the squirrel to give it my best. Rather than seeing me as her knight in shining armor coming to the rescue, she responded as most mammals would when confronted with another mammal several hundred times her size–with sheer terror and animosity. Fortunately my gloves proved up to the task and withstood all of her toothy assaults while I extracted her from the net. Unfortunately she chewed through one of the net trammels which now gives us something to do before we open tonight. Oh joy!

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