3 days Ago
I told myself that I wouldn’t mention the ongoing drought conditions in this week’s column. But it’s hard not to when outside conditions advertise the dryness everywhere you look. And here in the valley where I live the dryness produced very little pretty fall color.
At this time in November there aren’t supposed to be fresh roses opening up or butterflies flying around. But with the temperature at 9 a.m.
at 60 degrees, several of my hybrid rose bushes with deep roots still have buds and blooms in spite of the dry hot conditions. Weather like this has also been bad for data collection at hawk watch sites. Raptors don’t migrate a lot when it’s this warm because they don’t have to.
November weather is usually cold and windy, but so far that hasn’t happened. In spite of this odd weather, though, Northern saw-whet owls are migrating at night. At only 8 inches tall, this owl is slightly smaller than the more common screech owl .
But it’s extremely secretive, and only occasionally seen in this area from this time in the fall through winter. This is the time of the year when accredited bird banders set up nets in the dark to try to temporarily capture these little owls. They use audiolures of the bird’s “too, too, too, too” song , playing it over and over again.
Then they stop it and check the nets every 30 minutes. A week or so ago long-time birder friend Dave DeReamus attended a local owl netting site for saw-whets. He said that at first there were more than 20 other people there, but as the night wore on and no saw-whets were caught only he and one other woman remained with the two guys doing the banding.
Eventually they decided that perhaps they weren’t going to catch any saw-whets that night and they began dismantling their three sets of nets. And it was only when they went to take down the last net that they found a saw-whet in it. After a saw-whet is measured, sexed, weighed, and banded, it’s released back into the wild.
However, sometimes these little owls don’t fly off right away, which is what Dave said happened that night. And Dave’s account of that happening brought a similar one to my mind. Years ago at a saw-whet banding site at Hawk Mountain the banders were having a good night by catching and releasing several of these small relatively tame owls.
So they asked a woman who had never before seen one if she would like to release one. At first she was understandably hesitant, but then she agreed to hold and release it. But it didn’t seem to want to move from her hand, so they told her what to do to get it to move, and it did.
It flew up and landed on her head, leaving behind scat as it did so. And I’ll bet that woman never forgot that night and has told a lot of people about it. Currently, at several local places both vultures and bald eagles have been seen feeding on dead deer.
Usually, but not always, the vultures find the carcass first before an eagle, or sometimes multiple eagles, swoop in and take over. more lehigh valley outdoors news Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.
com ..
