![]() ![]() ![]() The whole process lasts only five or ten minutes, after which the owl is released unharmed. Each owl is weighed, fitted with a lightweight, individually numbered leg band issued by the federal Bird Banding Lab, and a series of measurements are taken. Since the project began in 1997, the Ned Smith Center crew has banded more than 11,000 saw-whet owls, with as many as 100 captured in a single evening at a single site. Attracted by the call, migrating owls are lured into the nets, where they are captured and held briefly for banding and processing. Each evening at dusk, crew members open a line of almost invisible mist nets in the woods and turn on an audiolure that broadcasts a tape recording of a male saw-whet owl's tooting advertisement call. Weidensaul oversees a research crew of 18 banders and 85 assistants, working at three sites in the mountains of eastern and southcentral Pennsylvania every night from the beginning of October until Thanksgiving. Each autumn, Scott Weidensaul coordinates a major research effort under the auspices of the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art to learn more about the movements and ecology of the northern saw-whet owl, the smallest owl in the East and one of the most enigmatic birds in North America. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |