Hilliardton marsh catches 2 long eared owls banded at Whitefish point michigan

white fish point long eared owl

 There has been a quote that has never stopped bouncing inside of my brain since i was in high school and it might upset our friends at whitefish point Michigan. Football legendary coach  form nearby green bay Wisconsin once said "fatigue makes cowards of us all"  I would adapt that quote to read owl banding makes non bloggers of us all. 

sarah bonnett with a boreal owl

It has been a long time since we have blogged about our progress and the owl banding season has been very strange due the un-fall like temperatures we have experienced and now the moon phase is at is worst with tomorrow night being the full moon.

chris  nicole and sarh 3/4 of team intrepid/sleepy

Having said that the intrepid crew of  the marsh...I was going to make a star trek joke  but resisted.... the crew had been hard at it and while we are well below seasonal averages we have still managed to band  the following

nicole with a boreal in the boreal

nic
207 northern sawwhet owls
14 long eared owls
12 boreal owls

and the big news is that we had our first long eared owl banded at another station and ........................
........ then it happened again!!!!

And both turned out to be form whitefish point which is absolutely amazing. The news gets better it turns ou that these 2 owls are the first ever long eared owls they have banded that have ever showed up anywhere . Add to that that whitefish point retrapped 2 long eards we banded in 2015 and the excitement  and the story continues to grow.

joanne hamilton with the wise use of gloves during the banding process

Well that is about all the time I have to blog for now  other than to say we continue to band song  birds during the day and we have surpasses 11,000 birds banded at the marsh for the year which pretty much crushes our best total of 9700.  Thanks has to go to our incredible banding crew and their continued dedication through owl induce fatigue. Hopefully i will be able to entice them to blog so we can fill in some gaps or just reflect on the fall migration and how amazingly lucky we are to be able to band in the boreal forest

bird is the word!!!