Springtime is one of my favorite seasons but so far this year in Saskatchewan it has been hard for Old Man Winter to leave us and let the warmer temps settle in. I began calling for Saw-whet Owls at the start of March in hopes of figuring out if any of the owls from the fall had stayed close to home for the cold winter months. On March 15th I was not expecting to catch 3 of my owls from the previous fall over the course of a 2 hr evening. Now either these birds stayed close to my banding site or I was just lucky enough to catch 3 previously banded Saw-whets that were coming back through on their way North again, my guess is that they stayed close to here.
Here is one of them
On March 29th I was out again and with temps at +1C and a slight southerly breeze I decided to try my luck. There was still alot of snow cover but I had a nice clear net lane free from snow and deer except for 2 Ruffed Grouse that almost flew into the net! After half and hour the first owl was caught, a nice small SY male caught around 21:40 and after 10 more mins the larger owl in hand on the left was caught. Turned out to be an SY female and both were above average weight.
Yesterday was above freezing and I wanted to see if I could find any Red-tailed Hawks to road trap. I came across 6 RTHA's and a single Rough-legged Hawk and this Gyrfalcon. The interesting thing about this GYRF is that it was a juvenile and it was banded already. Now that I know there was a Juvy GYRF banded southeast of Tessier where I found this bird the chances are pretty good that it is the same bird. So it could be coincidence that this bird is still floating around the countryside but the chances are even better that it is on it's way back north travelling from Outlook Sk so far to Tessier Sk in an NW direction. Its anyones guess but it sure is nice to see that this bird has made it through it's first winter!
Juvy Gyrfalcon
