2020 Season Begins!

 The 2020 Season began with 8 owls!  What a great start!  

2020, Master Bander Ken Sobon takes on the Station and the Blog, Pass the Birdbling Please!

In 2017, I (Dawn) retired from directing the owl program and was thrilled when my subpermittee Ken Sobon said he wanted to continue the project. Long term monitoring of a species reveals population trends and is valuable to identify changes over time with our changing climate, prey fluctuations, regional fires, etc. We've learned so much over the 12 years that I ran the station, including, there is so much more to learn. It's all been such an incredible part of my life in Northern California and now, time for a new chapter. I'm sure there will be owls involved!. Ken has put in hours of banding, enhanced the program with nest boxes and technology, and is a competent leader. He has recently received his Master Banding Permit. CONGRATULATIONS! Ken will also be taking over the blog and continue to share season highlights. 

Master Bander and Station Director, Ken Sobon

Passing the Baton, Master Bander and retired Station
Director Dawn Garcia

            

2019, 100 OWLS!!

 A lot happened in the 2019 NSWO season. Below are a few highlights of the season. We banded 100 new owls and captured a bird originally banded in British Columbia! We had some cool mammals in the area including our typical bats, a netted flying squirrel and a ringtail (Bassariscus astutus)!

Licensed banders were Project Director Ken Sobon and assistants Wyatt Hersey and Dawn Garcia. Thank you to our returning seasoned bander Julie Newman and volunteers Mary Muchowski, Jessica Shippin and Tanner Hansen and many new volunteers: Charlie Gianini, Jack Geist,  Megan Cheny, Leslie Saldavar, Melany Scannell, Anton Dressler, and Asher Perla. WOW, thanks to all!

Portrait of a saw-whet banded in 2019

NSWO banded at the BCCER since 2005. Blue represents the number of adult
owls, red represents the number of  young owls (hatched that year).

Our 2019 foreign recovery, a three year old originally banded in 2017
 in Canada. 

Ken shows off the owl from Canada, only our 3rd foreign
recovery since we opened in 2005. 

The elusive ringtail, a super cool mammals 
of the oak woodlands

A NSWO BAND RECOVERY- A FIRST FOR THE BCCER!

At CSU Chico Reserve's we have banded almost 900 owls since we first opened the monitoring station in 2005. This is the very first time another station has recaptured one of the banded owls from our site. And look at the traveling this little lady did~ approximately 800 miles straight line distance! Of course that probably was not her flight itinerary, maybe making stops in Oregon and Washington? You can see by the banding certificate and map below sent to the "finder" by the Bird Banding Laboratory that we at the BCCER site captured the bird as a Hatch Year (she was hatched in 2017) during fall migration.

Information and points where this female HY bird
was banded (blue, 2017) and recaptured (yellow, 2018)

Then, this October 2018, Rocky Point Bird Observatory in Canada, netted her again during fall migration. It's been a full year since her original band date. Where has she been?  We can only guess between point A and B but I assume she flew north in the winter/spring 2017 to breed, maybe somewhere in Canada. Then she flew south through the tip of Vancouver Island at the RPBO. Here her information was input into the BBL's "report a band site" by Rebecca and she received the certificate of appreciation showing the owl's information.

The certificate banders receive from the Bird Banding Lab
when they report a banded bird

Foreign Recoveries (a recapture of another stations bird), are much more common where the NSWO banding stations are denser, like back east and Canada. They are valuable to determine timing, direction and distance of migrating owls, and longevity. Check out the map below for active owl stations across the country

Map of active NSWO banding stations (red dots) in 2010

2018 NSWO MONITORING OFF TO A GREAT START!

Ken and banders Wyatt and Dawn, plus a great group of veteran and seasoned volunteers will be running the NSWO station at the BCCER again, for the 16th season! We had a training for new assistants to show the banding process, the data we collect, and the value of long term monitoring. Ken and Wyatt conducted their first banding on October 8 and were surprised with an evening of 10 new owls! Eight of the owls were hatched in 2018 (HY) and 2 were second year, SY, hatched in 2017.  It appears that it could be another great year for owl reproduction from this population of owls. If you want to learn about the owls, contact Program Director Ken Sobon, ksobon@thermalito.org.

The owls are curious and often look at you before take off.
Photo by Ken Sobon

NSWO CSI; Murder on the BCCER

Banding an owl tells us many things including age, longevity,  movement, residency and death.  In late February, Jon Aull, Outdoor Education Coordinator at the Reserve contacted us about a saw-whet he had found predated, band number 1104-43252.

Predated Saw-whet Owl at the BCCER
Note the band on the right leg. (Jon Aull photo)

I looked it up in our database and found that this individual was banded on October 28, 2017 during fall migration on the Reserve. We could not sex the bird due to overlapping measures of wing chord and mass (84 grams), but we did age it as a hatch year. So this owl did not survive a full year. If a bird makes it out of the nest, the first year becomes the most vulnerable period in their lives. There are predators, disease, and man-made obstacles in the wild, and young birds learn through experiences that they don't often survive.

I think that maybe a great horned owl caught this owl at night and had half a meal, or maybe a mammal plucked the saw-whet from a low perch during the day. I don't believe it was killed by a diurnal raptor like a cooper's hawk, because the owl would have been surrounded by plucked feathers. 

If you find a banded bird contact the bird banding laboratory (BBL) and you will receive information about that bird  AND a certificate of appreciation. Thank you!

BEST YEAR EVER 2017, 162 NEW OWLS!

Fall 2017 migration season kept the BCCER owl banders very busy, and very happy! We had 175 total captures including 162 new owls and 13 same season recaptures. The owls consisted of 121 females, 11 males and 30 of unknown sex. We had a whopping 120 hatch year owls (owls hatched in summer 2017) and 40 owls were two years and older (17 were three+ years!). See the previous post for more details: http://birdbling.blogspot.com/2017/11/one-hundred-and-twenty-nine-owls.html