That's right.  I'm talking about You Know Hooo.  Hidden in Bainbridge Island forests, perched on a limb sits a charming fellow called the Northern Saw-Whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus).  It's a long name for such a little feller, but what this owl lacks in size it makes up for in cuteness.  No bigger than a Coke can, this owl caps out at around 8 inches in length and weighs at most 4 ounces!  Light as a feather indeed.

Dry and whet!

There is wet and there's whet.  You get wet from the rain, but if you're a tool you get sharp from a whetting stone.  This is a stone used to sharpen wood-working tools and.... you guessed it- saws.  Have you ever sharpened your saw with a whetting stone?  Really?  How 'old school' as the kids say.  If so, you have a sense of what the alarm call of this owl sounds like.  Birders call it a "skiew" sound.  I've heard it.  There is also the 'hoop' noise.  It's a whistled toot called over and over again.  Some owls are hooters (think Great Horned Owls and Barred Owls) and some owls are tooters (Northern Saw-Whet Owls, Western Screech Owls, Pygmy Owls).  Great Horned and Barred Owls are medium-large sized owls and saw-whets and screech owls are itty-bitties.  Big owls get the hoots and little owls, the toots!

Northern Saw-Whet Owl hoop call

They Call me 'The Wanderer'

Yeaaa the wanderer...I roam around and 'round and 'round...

It's dark by 5 o'clock and the photoperiod or day:night ratio alerts forest fauna to start bulking up, hunkering down or start heading south.  It is actually the increased length of dark, not the shortened day which sends these chemical messages to wildlife.  The same factors apply to trees losing their leaves too.  Flocks of migrating birds can be seen in the skies above or in bare branches.  Even the migrants need to occasionally stop and refuel.  That is the case for Northern Saw-Whet Owls.  They come down from up north, move east or west, but do not go off the continent.  They definitely wander.  They are sort of wussy migrants.  I'd be wussy too if I were the size of a jar of peanut butter.

Saw-whets in Nets

Many saw-whet owls stop over at IslandWood and on their way down from Canada.  During October and November, Jamie Acker, a local celebrity birder leaves the warmth of his house to study these elusive forest owls.  As they say in Owl Moon (by Jane Yolen)- "when you go owling, you have to be quiet and make your own heat."  Owl research is all about patient waiting, cold fingers and compassionate owl handling.  

 I get to go out with Jamie from time to time (I supply hot chocolate).  It's a challenge for me to stay quiet. 

Jamie sets up nets and a wonky old CD player and hits "repeat."  The toots of the Northern Saw-Whet Owl broadcast into the ravine and curious saw-whets fly towards the player....and into the net.  A few nights ago we were returning from a net run when I heard a raspy chirp/screech from behind me and watched as a saw-whet careened into the net about 2 inches away from me.  Below is a picture of me slowly extracting a little owl.  It looks quite tangled, but compared to a Winter Wren- this was easy.  It was 35 degrees outside, but I still had sweaty palms.  It's nerve-wracking to do this work...you want to be so gentle, but still fast.

Owls are extracted from the nets and after a few ruffled feathers (on the owl's part), owls are carefully weighed and their molts reviewed.  Here is Jamie at the banding station.

We add a little "leg bling" to the owl's feathered ankle in form of a tiny metal bracelet with a long number on it.  That band is the most important part.  We also measure the wings, aka wing chord.  We weigh the owl in a highly technical frozen juice can (pictured at banding station) and I will check the ears for creepy crawlies like mites.  None on this guy.  Challenge:  Where are the ears on an owl?  Extra challenge:  What makes owl ears unique?

 My all-time fave part of data collection is when we record the eye color of the saw-whets.  We have paint swatches on little cards with names such as "Oxford Gold," "Sassy Sunshine," or "Dick Tracey Rainslicker."

Okay, I made those last two up.  But we did have 2 "oxford golds" that night.  Aren't paint colors hilarious?

Fact:  The yellow in the eyes of these owls and other birds is from xanthopterin, or yellow reflecting pigments in the iris.  "Xantho" is Greek for "yellow." 

SAWWHETNET

There is a not-so-underground movement of people out there in the US banding birds (songbirds, raptors, pigeons, crows).  They can't be underground...they are not banding moles, they are banding birds!  These people all share certain characteristics: they love birds, want to know more about their habits and care about where they go and what they do.  I suspect there might be a bit of a "Snow White Complex" too.  Ya know, since Snow White had birds landing on her.  'Whistle while you work' and all that.

Citizen science like bird banding is being done by ordinary Joes or Janes and by professional scientists trained in fancy places.  For Northern Saw-whet Owl banders, they all flock to one site though:  www.projectowlnet.org

The data we collect at IslandWood and Jamie Acker collects around the island is being shared on SAWWHETNET- a listserv of dedicated (albeit nerdy) folks who are doing this work around the country.  That data is then funneled to the North American Bird Banding Laboratory at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.  They've got fun little links at www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/

You can go there if you ever find a dead bird with a band on its leg.  I found a pigeon once back in 1999 but hadn't known where to report it.  The BBL is a good place for that info!

Similiar efforts exist by professional and citizen scientists alike for banding songbirds, pigeons, crows too... and you have to have a license by the way.  It's a very official thing, so don't start bejeweling the legs of the robins in your front yard or anything. 

The goal is to use the data collected as a baseline for decision making and to influence policies that may affect birds.

It was only about a hundred years ago when people were shooting birds to study them, so we've come a long way.  Thanks to the banders out there, keeping watch o'er their flocks by night!  Wow, a sheep/shepard/bander/bird/holiday pun.  I think that's a first for me.