We concluded our fourth year of banding Northern Saw-whet Owls this past
weekend in Campbell County, just outside Lynchburg. Our total this
year was just seven saw-whets in 38 nights of banding. We run one site
with a line of six nets in a deciduous woods, using an audio lure,
usually opening 1/2-1 hour after sunset until 11 PM, with hourly net
checks unless there is a high volume of birds, which was definitely not
the case this year.
We opened on 26 October and promptly caught one bird, followed by two
more the next night. We did not catch another owl for the next eleven
nights, until one 10 November. The last owls came the weekend before
Thanksgiving, with two on 18 November and one, the last, the next night.
Our last night opening was 11 December, and we were not open seven
nights during the period because of rain, ice or snow. One screech owl
was also netted this season, which is par for us.
This year it is possible that Saw-whets have not moved into Virginia's
piedmont in as large of numbers as is typical at this point in time. We
had reports of about normal numbers of birds being banded at some
stations to our north, such as in Pennsylvania and Ontario, but did not
see this materialize into decent numbers of owls here. The past three
years we have banded 39, 38, and 52 birds in 21, 26, and 26 nights of
banding respectively. This year we were able to be in operation nightly
through the season with the help of some biology students, whose help
was very appreciated, as was the help again this year of Mark Johnson
and Robert Ferrell of the Lynchburg Bird Club.
Gene Sattler
Lynchburg
