[cobirds] owls

Hi All,

 

We opened our mist nets tonight for our third evening of attempting Boreal Owl trapping in RMNP.  We began playing the Boreal Owl call at 7:30pm and checked the nets every half hour. We heard and saw nothing until 9:30pm.

 

We went to check the nets and still saw nothing in the nets.  I did hear a Northern Saw-whet Owl calling back to the recording, so I began shining my flashlight in the trees to see if the bird was near us or not, and to my surprise a Boreal Owl was looking at me as the Northern Saw-whet was calling behind it.

 

I called to the rest of the group to come and see the owl, it was a life bird for most of the folks. 

 

At the same time I turned the recorder down very low to see if the Boreal owl would move closer to the CD player. As I was turning down the recorder, the Boreal Owl moved closer and closer to me until it was just a few feet in front of me looking at the recorder. At that time the Northern Saw-whet Owl flew into one of the three mistnets and was captured.

 

I extracted the smaller saw-whet and placed her in a holding bag to be carried into the room to be processed.  I went back toward the Boreal Owl and it flew directly into the mistnet that I had just taken the saw-whet from.

 

I processed the saw-whet first  She was a bird born this year and had a wing length or wing cord of 140mm and weighed 95.3 grams. The Boreal Owl was also a bird of this year who had a wing length og 182mm and she weighed 127.5 grams.

 

I have photos of the two bird together that I will be posting on my facebook page in a day or so.

After  we had taken eecerything down, a Northern Saw-whet Owl was heard calling back up the hill.  All and all , I would say it was a pretty good evening.

 

Scott Rashid

Estes Park