Owl banding has started a bit late here in Homer, AK this year. The nets are usually set up during the last week in August, but near-continuous bad weather delayed things. Nets were finally set up on Sep 1, and banding efforts started on Sep 2.

As of tonight (Sep 11), 24 Northern Saw-whets have been banded- all hatch-year birds.

After a few nights of banding, this location’s 2000th Northern Saw-whet Owl was banded.

We almost hit #2000 the previous night, but one hold-out preferred to watch the proceedings from the trees instead.

Banding will continue through the end of October; I try to open nets every night that weather permits.

Banding has been slower this week due to all the rain, but there were still owls to be banded. The 200th owl for the season (a hatch-year Northern Saw-whet Owl) was banded on Sep 23.

Banding results for the week:

Things started picking up a bit last night.
Six owls were banded: four hatch-year Northern Saw-whets and two hatch-year Boreal Owls.

The Boreals were the first for this season.  Only three Boreals were banded during Fall 2016 (down considerably from previous years), so this is a good start.

Boreal Owl banded on Sep 4, 2017

The season’s first Boreal Owl showed up on Sep. 6.

Over the past few nights:

Sep 8: 1 Northern Saw-whet Owl (rain closed things down early)
Sep 6: 3 Northern Saw-whets and one Boreal Owl
Sep 5: 4 Northern Saw-whets
Sep 3: 2 Northern Saw-whets.

All of these birds (Sep 3 – Sep 8) were hatch-year birds except for the Boreal Owl (2nd year).

Sep 7: The station’s thousandth owl was banded last night. This was the busiest night of the season so far, with 17 hatch-year Northern Saw-whets banded.

Photos of the station’s thousandth owl:

Two hatch-year Northern Saw-whets banded.  Thick fog settled in about an hour after opening the nets.

George Harbeson sent some great photos from his visit on Sep 5: