Still Going Strong!

Although we had some snow this past week, we are still catching Hawks and Owls! 11 more owls have been caught since last Saturday(3rd) and we caught 4 Red-tails on this Saturday(10th).

Of the Owls caught the majority (10 of 11) have been Hatch Year Birds ,which seems to indicate that the Migration is still going strong although the largest Flights have probably past!

We had another Foreign Retrap , which is No. 2 this Season. It was banded on Oct 15th in Lakefield Ontario. As a Crow flies that is about 100 kms(60miles) to the East in 25 days. That is an average of 4kms a night, which is not much. Since we have Lake Simcoe between us, it now makes us wonder if it went North to come around or South to come back North again. We do not think it flew directly across the Bay which is about 6 kms, but there is still that posibility.(I'll post a pic soon)

Of the Hawks we caught on Saturday, there were 2 Adults and 2 Juvies. The Adults normally have a Brown Eye and the Juvies a Yellow Eye, so it is confusing that we caught this "Adult" RTHA with yellow Eyes

The first photo is the Confusing one, the 2nd is a typical Adult(dark eyes) and typical Juvie, the 3rd is the Typical Adult.

100 Swets and counting!

On Friday night I banded my 100 Saw-whet of the season.It was the 6th of 8 Owls caught that night. This is of course an all time High for me as I have only banding a couple of years!.

Collectively between 3 Banders in 2 locations we have 215 Saw-whets,3 Screech,1 Barred and as of Saturday a Long-eared Owl.When I recieve photos I will add them to this!

We will be lucky to get another week or so of Owls and the Raptor Station will be closing down also. We will in the winter months start Road Trapping for Snowy Owls and other winter Raptors around Simcoe County.

This is not a fluke that we are having a Banner Year for Owls as almost all Stations in North America are having incredible Nights. Thousands of Saw-whet Owls have been banded this Fall and many have been retrapped as they Move south. I will give a pretty good picture of how the Owls move. They have had an exceptional Breeding Season and we now get a chance to scratch the Surface of the Magnitude of their Migration!

All Banders that participate in the Owl Migration Monitoring deserve a Big Round of Applause for all thier efforts. Many of us are not paid to do this and put in incredible amounts of Time to make it all work. We are normal working Stiffs with Families,Men, Woman,Young and Old of many backgrounds and Beliefs. We all work together as Individuals or small Groups for one common Goal. It is an experience all should have atleast once in their Lives. It is important for Children especially as they wil be the ones that will carry on after us.