Idle March

Things have slowed to a crawl to explain my bird banding as of late. March started off good with 5 Boreal Owls banded in 2 nights.

Adult Boreal Owl



March also brought my 3rd Gyrfalcon of the winter, a very plump adult female Gyr. My first ever adult captured.

There seems to be the odd Great Gray Owl and Northern Hawkowl still floating around, here is a Hawkowl I banded by Manning.

We finally deployed our last satellite transmitter a couple of weeks ago on a 4 year old Snowy Owl I caught by Whitelaw hence he is named Whitelaw. He sat on a large transmission line for about a week then decided to move SE across both the Peace River and Smokey River to an area that I've banded lots of Snowies in the past, I'm still very much amazed how these birds head to areas where I've been before.

Here he is with Raptor biologist Mike Russell without transmitter.

Satellite transmitter attached

Map showing current location.

Today I went south by Girouxville to try for some Snowies, I only came across an adult female Snowy I banded back in Feb, but as I continued South I watched this Northern Goshawk at the grain terminal sitting waiting for pigeons to arrive. I'm glad I found him before any pigeons arrived.