Gillis
New member
Hi everyone,
So in the real world I get to be a biologist and play with wild birds. Well, not really play with them, more like fondle them and their babies as I band them, measure them, sex them, age them, and yes, occasionally pet them.
Recently I've worked for a small saw-whet owl banding operation here in upstate NY. I was never much a fan of owls until I held one of these little beauts and discovered just how charming and alluring it is to stare into those big yellow eyes.
We capture them with mist nets using a loud audio lure. Then we extract them and work them up and release them back into the wild 10 minutes later with no harm done besides a prick in their ego (and under their wing)!
This season I am taking blood samples for a blood parasite study that has never been described for my area before. Does anyone have experience looking at blood parasites under oil immersion? Me neither. They are proving to be quite challenging.
So without further adieu, here are some photos of our work (all taken by me except the last one).
Heading up to the banding bench, just out of the net.
Owl being prepped for bloodwork. I wrap them in a towl for their safety and peace-of-mind. You can see just how little they are - and this is a big lady owl!
A closeup of her aluminum band with its unique 9-digit identification number.
Me holding one in the banding shed.
This one is stepping up onto my finger to fly away. Check out those sharp talons!
Fluorescence pattern of an after-second-year bird.
An Eastern Screech Owl that we had to capture and release a few miles away because they can eat saw-whets. He was actually a lot better off than he looks in the photo! Poor guy.
And lastly, here I am holding the only Barred Owl we ever caught in over 5 years. How cool!!
Thanks for looking!
So in the real world I get to be a biologist and play with wild birds. Well, not really play with them, more like fondle them and their babies as I band them, measure them, sex them, age them, and yes, occasionally pet them.
Recently I've worked for a small saw-whet owl banding operation here in upstate NY. I was never much a fan of owls until I held one of these little beauts and discovered just how charming and alluring it is to stare into those big yellow eyes.
We capture them with mist nets using a loud audio lure. Then we extract them and work them up and release them back into the wild 10 minutes later with no harm done besides a prick in their ego (and under their wing)!
This season I am taking blood samples for a blood parasite study that has never been described for my area before. Does anyone have experience looking at blood parasites under oil immersion? Me neither. They are proving to be quite challenging.
So without further adieu, here are some photos of our work (all taken by me except the last one).
Heading up to the banding bench, just out of the net.
Owl being prepped for bloodwork. I wrap them in a towl for their safety and peace-of-mind. You can see just how little they are - and this is a big lady owl!
A closeup of her aluminum band with its unique 9-digit identification number.
Me holding one in the banding shed.
This one is stepping up onto my finger to fly away. Check out those sharp talons!
Fluorescence pattern of an after-second-year bird.
An Eastern Screech Owl that we had to capture and release a few miles away because they can eat saw-whets. He was actually a lot better off than he looks in the photo! Poor guy.
And lastly, here I am holding the only Barred Owl we ever caught in over 5 years. How cool!!
Thanks for looking!
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Do you get to hear them hoot as they pass by?
Couldn't their 'little' talons do some damage if they wanted to, especially the Barred Owl?
We band birds for a variety of reasons: to determine migration routes, tally population numbers, acquire data on age and gender metrics, study longevity, migration and nesting site fidelity, and a plethora of data gathered from the birds themselves such as what types of ectoparasites live on them, what kind of diseases do they carry, what blood parasites do they have, etc. Here is a useful article from the place we get our bands from explaining some of the benefits of banding: 
