It was cold last night, down to -3 degrees by 11:00 PM. At ten, I went out to “help” the owl team with their net checks. In 2 hours, nothing. So I went home to bed and left them to it. I was just dropping off when the phone rang with Christine wanting to let me know that they had just netted 3(!) Northern Saw-whet Owls and did I want to come back and band one. Absolutely! What a delight these little predators are – so cute, belying their killing proficiency – and so easy to handle. This brings our total to 5 new banded and one foreign retrap. The team has demonstrated that these small owls move through here and raises the conjecture that with a better sound system and a more consistent effort we might, in fact, catch a good number of them. Subsequent net checks didn’t turn up any more birds. We closed up at 2:00 AM.

Rick