birdbling: October 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

MEET THE NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL LAST CHANCE FOR OUR RAFFLE ENTRY

Tonight, October 27th, we will draw 4 lucky winners to meet the Saw-whet, by day or night. This is a unique adventure and will make a great gift too! See the details about our outings at the September 2012 Post (this blog). Tickets are 1 for $3.00 or 2 for $5.00 and can be purchased by emailing altacal@conservation.org with the number of tickets you want. Then, send your check to: Altacal Audubon Society PO Box 3671 Chico, California 95927-3671, and put OWL RAFFLE in the memo line. Below is an example of whoooooo you might see, by day- or night!

POM (egranate), one of our radio-marked owls,
tracked to her daytime roost. She was very interested in our activities!
J. Shaw Photo

We have added a bunch of new owl photos for adoption, including this cutie below. Adoption certificates make great gifts and help support our program. Thank you for your support!

Northern Saw-whet Owl, by night, you could see one!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

KIDS and OWLS (and banding results Oct 15-19)

We love having parents and their kids come to meet the owls. It's our opportunity to excite them about the night and owls, and science and conservation. On Friday, we had two very engaging children, one a budding writer and the other on his way to becoming an investigative reporter. We had a great time answering all kinds of questions and laughing-and so did they!

Happy owlers and their very first saw-whet owl (photo by Shari Brogden)

Our captures have been interesting; a boom and then a decline. Here are the results from our last 4 banding nights:

Oct 15 - 12 NSWO 8 HY/4 AHY

Oct 17 - 10 NSWO 7 HY/3 AHY
Oct 18 - 4 NSWO 1 HY/3 AHY

Oct 19 - 2 NSWO 2 HY
We have a nice ratio of hatch year birds (61%) to adults (39%), indicating good reproductive success (or very net savvy adults!)

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

12 Owls and 2 Oddities

Our owl numbers are increasing nicely, it is proving to be a great start to our year. Here are the last two nights of banding results:
October 13: 3 NSWO 1 HY, 2 AHY (2 hours)
October 15: 12 NSWO!!! 8 HY, 4 AHY (4.5 hours)

Catching owls, particularly in the numbers we do, results in those with some abnormalities. Here are two: a crossed bill which could be very detrimental to hunting, and one white talon, which is likely non-threatening in any way, just different. Steve King took this picture, from the left of the owl. You can see the long mandible.

from the right you see the crossed maxilla. The good news is this bird is at least 2 years old, so has learned to live with the challenge of an abnormal beak. Unfortunately beak abnormalities have increased since the 1990's and based on information found on the web about deformities: "in birds can be caused by many different factors, including environmental contaminants, nutritional deficiencies, and bacterial, viral, fungal or parasitic infections"(http://www.utne.com/Wild-Green/Freakish-Bird-Beaks-Perplex-Experts.aspx.)." Other than our foreign recap from Montana, we have no idea where this bird came from.

Banders Mike and Raina photographed this bird with one white talon, which is likely non-threatening in any way, just different. Although it does appear to be longer than the black talons.

The more birds we capture, the more we are likely to see some oddities. We always discover something new!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

OWL SEASON, 2012-OFF TO A FLYING START!

Our saw-whet season officially starts October 15 with our standardized 5 days/week monitoring. But we always like to do a little random sampling to see when the first birds show up. And we are glad we did!

Trio of Saw-whets! Photo by Steve King

Starting on September 29th, we had a zero owl night, with no owls (of any species) heard. On October 6th banders Mike Fisher, Raina and Steve King and Julie Shaw gave a special outing to Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve guests. Everyone was incredibly pleased with TWO saw-whet owls and a Myotis bat, hooting Great horned owls and a trilling screech owl.

Since then:
October 8: 2 NSWO, 1 Hatch year (HY), 1 After Hatch Year (AHY)
October 11: 6 NSWO, 3 HY and 3 AHY!

It is bound to be a good season for owls!
You can join us too - check out the post below for our awesome owl outing raffle.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Our Supporters

Every great program needs some great sponsors! Aside from abundant volunteer hours, annual funding is necessary for running the project, equipment, and maintenance of sites. Our partners include:

Altacal Audubon Society- Bander Support, Adopt an Owl and Adopt a Box program and some amazing volunteers (see below).

CSU Chico Research Foundation - funded the seasonal running of the program 2010-2012.

Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve - contributing to onsite maintenance of the owl stations and equipment needs.

Private sponsors whose contributions are necessary and appreciated include:

Butte Creek Foundation - $5000

Howard Wurlitzer - $3000

Mary Lou Martin - $300 to kick off the

Adopt-an-Owl program

Adopt an Owl Supporters - $2500(and increasing!)

Sacramento Audubon Society

Central Valley Bird Club members

Bob and Marilyn Alber

Katherine Garcia (thanks mom!)

Dorthy Davis and her fabulous painting donation

Wyatt Hersey and his great t-shirt design

Meet Ken Sobon

Ken is an avid birder, field trip leader and Vice President for Altacal Audubon Society. In 2020, he received his Master Bander Permit to have oversight of the all aspects of the project. He has volunteered with the owl project for seven seasons and beginning in fall 2017, he took on the program as Director with Julie Newman. In spring 2017 he added a new component to our program - nest boxes!, to determine if NSWO might be nesting on the Reserve. He will monitor the boxes each spring. Ken is also a science teacher for middle school kids in Oroville, California and enjoys sharing science and his love of birds with his students in the classroom and field since 1995.

NSWO Project Founder and Director 2005-2016, Birdbling Founder and Blogger!

Night Owl? Not really. But I am interested in feathered critters of the night ever since working my first job with the Northern Spotted Owl in Washington State - 1989! I am a birder, bird bander, biologist and conservationist; a complete fan of the avian taxa, love birds, especially songbirds. I am very concerned about the plight of birds and our anthropogenic impacts in the landscape (buildings, communication towers, habitat fragmentation, toxins, etc) and also the impacts that climate change will have. As a bird bander, I attempt to understand the demographics of local and migratory populations, productivity and survivorship of owls and songbirds. I always make sure that bird safety is top priority, striving to cause the least stress possible when handling birds. I have a phenomenal crew of volunteers whose philosophies agree with mine. We respect our nonhuman friends and endeavor to protect the habitats where they live on this earth.

Meet Julie Woodruff

Julie now runs her own station in the Oakland area, but prior: "Julie is an active volunteer in our banding program. We met when she joined the CSU Chico grad program in 2010 and was interested in studying Saw-whet Owls. We developed a great telemetry project based on the fall monitoring program: studying the winter roost selections and characteristics of the owls. She is also collecting pellets from the birds roosts and determining their winter prey. See more of Julie's project in our January 2011 blog posts."

Pages