End of the 2015 Northern Saw Whet Owl Banding Season

Nets were closed on the 5th season (2015) 0n 11 November. We caught 81 owls, 53 HY, 8 AHY, 11 SY, 8 ASY and 1 ATY.  Of the 81, 61 were female, 12 were male and 8 were unknown.  The nets were open 44 of the 53 days equaling 214 hours, which means we caught 1 owl every 2.68 hours when the nets were open.  In the 5 years that we have been banding northern saw whet owls, we have banded 250.  We have had 10 foreign recaptures and had returns on 3 of our birds.  On November 16, we set a net on the Bloomingdale Bog trail and caught 1 HY Long-eared owl.  The net was opened at 5:15 PM and closed at 11:00 PM…the lone owl was taken out of the net at the 10:00 PM net check.  It had a mass of 266 grams, a wing chord of 293 mm and a tail length of 148 mm.  It had a fat score of 3.