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 21 October 2012

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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!!!

21 October 2012.  I don't ask for much, just some even weather, good food, "a warm place to go to the bathroom" (Earl Butz), but most importantly, i just need "a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants" (Ted Baxter).  After some rough weather Wednesday and Thursday (but some much needed rain) and time to think about the random insertion of trivial quotes (or paraphrases) on my website, the weather delivered a few more saw-whets to my back yard Friday and Saturday, bringing my seasonal total to 630 of the footy little bastards.  As I have been hinting at all fall, the first boreal of the year tickled the twine in the late hours of Saturday evening. Such a beautiful owl; such an exuberant owler.  Yay for me!!!!!!

Leucistic second year saw-whet...my first in over 6000 captures.

Saw-whets 2012

Saw-whets 2011

Hops in Ice: 23 March 2009 Hops in ice: 24 March 2009 Aspen in ice:  24 March 2009

Backyard boreal (20 March 2009) I don't have DISH...I have a deer carcass.  A male fisher in for lunch (17 March 2008).  Update, 2011:  I now have DISH.

Saw-whet boy's first saw-whet

 October 2002

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?   

 
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!!!