On Saturday 10/26 I started efforts locally to band autumn Northern Saw-whet
Owls with the help of several members of the Lynchburg Bird Club. We are
operating in the Lynchburg area, east of the Blue Ridge in the Inner
Piedmont to build upon the work of the College of William and Mary's Center
for Conservation Biology on the Coastal Plain and of Clair Mellinger in the
mountains. Like other similar operations we are using a Saw-whet playback
tape behind a string of several mist nets. After a slow start and doubts as
to whether our efforts were going to produce anything significant we are now
starting to get some appreciable numbers of owls. The following are our
numbers of Saw-whets to date:
10/26 0
10/30 0
10/31 0 (except one screech owl and a couple of bat-chewed holes in the
nets)
11/1 2
11/2 4
11/4 11
We will be starting up again tomorrow after the rain clears out and plan to
have the nets open 4-6 nights a week up until 11 PM or midnight through the
week prior to Thanksgiving. After that we'll evaluate whether to make any
efforts in December.
Gene Sattler
Lynchburg, VA
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