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 31 May 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!!!

31 May 2008.  There is now officially, a saw-whet nest in my backyard. This picture was taken Wednesday morning and the female remains in the cavity as I type. I am performing Strigidaen back flips.  It's been an interesting process and even involved a bit of owler intervention, which you can read about in the  Son of Blog . I can't begin to tell you how satisfying this is.  Of course, my enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that owl nests can sometimes be very tenuous. Stay tuned....   

I don't have DISH...I have a deer carcass.  A male fisher in for lunch (17 March 2008) Another visitor to the deer carcass ( 31 March 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).   

 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!!!