Sep 1: 9 Saw-whets were banded, all hatch-year birds. A bright moon slowed things down around midnight as it rose.
Aug 30-31
Aug 31: 6 Saw-whets banded, all hatch-year birds. Things slowed down after the bright moon came up. Nearly bumped into a porcupine near the nets; fortunately it didn’t get caught in a mist net.
Aug 30: No owls banded. Too much wind, too much light from the full moon.
August 26-29
Aug 29: 5 Northern Saw-whets banded, all hatch-year, despite the bright full moon. Nets were open for 3 hours.
Aug 28: Very bright moon; nets open for 2 hours, no owls banded.
Aug 27: Too windy to open the nets.
Aug 26: Nets open for 2.5 hours, but conditions weren’t good- too windy and too much moonlight.
August 25
Three new Northern Saw-whets banded on the night of Aug 25. All three were hatch-year birds.
A fourth owl was caught; this one had been banded five days ago.
The nets were open for 2 hours and were closed at 12:15AM due to a cat in the area.
Aug 21-24
Banding results for Aug 21-24:
Aug 21: 1 Northern Saw-whet (hatch-year) banded.
Aug 22: 2 Northern Saw-whets (both hatch-year) banded. Nice aurora display around 2AM.
Aug 23: 1 Northern Saw-whet (hatch-year) banded.
Aug 24: 5 Northern Saw-whets (hatch-year) banded.
Aug 20, 2015: 8 NSWO
Eight more hatch-year Northern Saw-whets were banded last night; nets were open for 2.75 hours.
First night of banding, 2015
The first night with the nets open resulted in 9 Northern Saw-whets banded. All 9 were hatch-year birds, many with pin feathers evident on the feet / legs. Nets were open for 2.5 hours.
Start of 2015 banding season
It’s almost time to start banding owls again. I typically start banding during the last week in August.
Today I got the central triangle of nets set up, with the usual hassle of trying to set up nets interleaved on one pole while working alone. Fortunately I still had three good 9M nets from last year, although I’ll probably have to buy a couple of 12M for the rest of the setup.
The audio lure needed a bit of work as well; the SLA battery should have been put on the charger since last season but it wasn’t, so I had to replace the battery.
I’ve opened the nets up tonight for a trial run.
New audio lure for Holiday Beach
Built a new audio lure for the Holiday Beach owl banders a few months ago, after promising them a new one for a couple of years. It was time to retire the CDs and the portable CD player in favor of something MP3 based.
The new lure consists of cheap parts from eBay and some others salvaged from the junk drawers. The main components:
- mp3 player board with remote
- stereo amplifier board
- 4x 16650 Lithium batteries
- Plastic enclosure
- Deck horn
A few photos of the finished lure:
The sticker on the deckhorn seemed appropriate for this use.
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