An Owl's Life

Tuck away from the light and stir not, til darkness comes.

Then move without shadows on hushed wings.    W.H  Lane

"No....not a Weblog," she said. "Yes a Weblog," he replied.  Oh the horror. Oh the humanity.

Updated on 13 October, 2008

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"Get crazy with the

Cheez-whiz"  Beck

 

"...how Scandinavian of me"    Bjork

Welcome to my Web site, dedicated to the conservation of northern forest owls!!!

13 October, 2008.  Some of the suckiest weather on the planet has (hopefully) come to a close and I can catch the last gasps of the saw-whet migration.  The fifth graders are coming this week and it would be nice to have a few owls to entertain them with.  We'll see.  A cold front is moving through and despite the mud bowl in my back yard, I'll give it a shot tonight.  The female saw-whet (left) didn't stick around long enough to raise a tangle of fluffy owlets, but it was SO COOL while it lasted.   Son of Blog has been dusted off and is currently the location for a (multiple choice):  A) prurient ; B) salacious; C) endearing; D) accurate; or, E) completely unbelievable - retelling of Owlman and Saw-whet Boy's recent journey to the Pacific Northwest.     

Swets in my nets: 2007 I don't have DISH...I have a deer carcass.  A male fisher in for lunch (17 March 2008) Swets in my nets: 2008

Please respect the Copyright protection of all text and photos on any of my sites.  If you want to use something.....ASK!!!! 

24 June 2006.  Ma-swet.  Already banded, still hanging tight with her brood.

24 June 2006. Four "ready to roll" saw-whets await USFWS bands and the opportunity to poop on the biologist. Note the adled egg in foreground
7 May 2006.  Four boreal owlets surrounded by 13 dead voles...mostly red-backed with a couple of meadow voles thrown in.  This box will smell yummy in a couple of weeks. 

The luckiest shot I have ever taken. 

6 May 2006.  A newly hatched boreal owl.  And I mean newly hatched...probably 2 days old.  Three eggs are ready to join him/her.  

A nest of 4 newly-hatched saw-whets, surrounded by 8 fat, red-backed voles. A female boreal at the box entrance. A female saw-whet waits for the nest-check to end

For 3 glorious, Strigidaen weeks, a northern hawk owl was my close neighbor.

Winter does not get any better than this.

7 May  2006.  A saw-whet nest with 6 eggs.  There is lichen and moss in the nest, and I didn't put it there...so who did?   

The following was written during the 2001 irruption, but it applies today.  In fact, it will apply for every irruption during our lifetime.

The view from my front yard. 7 November, 2004.  Whew!
 
Female Boreal Owl Long-eared Owl

10 January 2004.  Nikky didn't want to take the back roads, but look at what he would have missed.

Parents: It's 20:00, do you know where your children are?

Fifth graders from the Sawtooth Elementary School risk their lives for an evening with the saw-whets.   

16 March 2004.  I proudly hold a second year, male boreal owl.  His girlfriend watched while this picture was taken.

there's much more to peruse!!!
A rodent's journey ends A Minnesota winter visitor A migrant Maine saw-whet One of "my girls".
"We common mortals, who cannot see in the dark, know very little about the courtship performance of the owls, except what we can learn from listening to their springtime voices" (A.C. Bent 1937).   
"I wish I could quit you."

 So much for intelligent design.

 

These pdf files are yours for the downloading:

2001 Annual Report

Birding Magazine

 Damn it Jim. I'm a biologist not a webmaster!!!