Banding season ends … basically

Our family and the Christmas owl – December 2014

Sorry for the lapse in reporting but there has been very little to report.  I may have missed a few birds that Zig and Christopher and Ben and others reported the week I was gone, but since then the snow and the rain and the generally bad weather has combined to bring an end to the banding season.  I will be back with a summary of the results and some highlights of the season. Our nets are still up and may stay up for a little longer … or at least until I return from our Christmas-with-the-children-and-grandchildren event which is taking place in California this year.

Check back later for the summary.

Clair Mellinger

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Perhaps Monday and/or Tuesday, 10/11 November

I am back from NC but I am not sure what the banding schedule has been the last several days.  I looks like we will get enough snow tomorrow night to prevent banding so the next attempts may be Monday and/or Tuesday night.

Clair Mellinger

Two more saw-whets banded

Charles Ziegenfus (Zig) and Christopher Lehman opened the nets on Tuesday night and banded two new owls and re-captured one that we had banded on November 11.

They were not up last night because of the snow but are planning to give it another try tonight, Thursday, November 6.

Me? I’m on the NC Outer Banks enjoying gannets, eider, scoters, turnstones, and hundreds, yea, thousands, of other waterfowl.  It’s almost hard for me to miss the saw-whets.

Clair Mellinger

Two more saw-whets and a Barred Owl

When EMU student and Mathias resident, Bekka, arrived she showed me a photo of a Barred Owl that she had taken and  then this happened.

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A Barred Owl closed our nets for the evening but not before we banded one more new saw-whet and re-trapped another banded saw-whet.  The banded bird turned out to have been originally banded in St. Ignace, Michigan on Mackinac Island.  This is one of the most western stations that we have ever had a banding record exchange with.  It was banded in 2016 but they aged the bird as 2+ years old at that time; so last night it was at least four-years-old.  We caught a lot of HY (hatch-year = young birds) this year but we also had a good group of rather old birds to report.

After we caught the Barred Owl and the EMU group left, I went up to close the nets and found the two saw-whets mentioned above.  I think that we will not open the nets tonight in order to allow the Barred Owl to figure out some other place to go for supper.  I will be gone next week so I am sure when/if the station will open again this year.  A full report for the year will appear at this site in the near future.

FORECAST

Next banding date … ?  Check back next week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Banding tonight after all!

I had an unexpected turn of events at the oral surgeons office this morning which has resulted in my not being able to band tonight so we will be closed tonight and perhaps tomorrow night as well.

Banding station open tonight, Wednesday, 28 November

We will give it a go tonight and hope to catch some owls to show Jim’s group.

No banding tonight, Tuesday, 27 November

The winds predicted for this evening are too strong for the safety of the owls.  Although it looks like the winds weren’t as strong as they predicted last night, I am assuming that the forecasts are closer to correct than last evening.  At any rate the predictions are for higher winds than last night.

FORECAST

Tonight – closed, due to unacceptably high winds

Wednesday night – open

Thursday – probably open

Clair Mellinger

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