“They’re banding owls tonight!” my brother Nicholas exclaimed at the supper table.
“Really?” I asked. “What time does it start?”
“The announcement at the banding station says 7:30 p.m.,” he replied.
“Let’s go!” I exclaimed.
We called Anthony, a friend who also enjoys birdwatching, and he said he would come and meet us there.
So half an hour later, Nicholas, two younger brothers, and I piled into the car and took off.
We live only about twenty minutes from the famous Long Point Bird Banding Observatory, but the minutes seemed to drag that night. Finally we arrived.
Grabbing our cameras, we found Anthony and his brother Greg and walked across the road and up to the observatory. Just as we arrived, the banders went out on their first net check. They use very fine mist nets to catch the owls, actually the same nets they use for songbirds in the spring and fall.
We stood around and visited a couple minutes until the banders came back. Oh, joy! One bander had a bag over her arm, which certainly meant an owl.
We trooped into the banding lab after them and waited impatiently while they turned their computers on. They left the building lights off and just used red headlights.
While the bander was extracting the owl from the bag, she asked, “Have any of you ever seen a Northern Saw-whet Owl before?”
None of us had, so we were all amazed at how small the owl actually was—only about 7 inches
(18 cm) tall.
As soon as she got it out, the owl ruffled up its neck feathers and clacked its beak menacingly at us. The bander had to hold its legs just right to avoid being pinched by its sharp talons.
The banders measured its wing to determine if it was a male or female, put its flight feathers under a UV light to determine how old it was, and finally put it into a tube and weighed it.
After they had recorded everything, they took it outside and held it up so we could get pictures of it.
To release the owl, they took it out behind the observatory where there was no light pollution, to let its eyes grow accustomed to complete darkness. After about five minutes, the bander told one of us to hold his arm out at shoulder height while she gently placed the bird on it. Nicholas was the first one to try it, but the owl just flew off right away.
We then waited while they did another net check. This time they came back with three owls!
We watched them do the process all over again. This time I got to hold an owl on my arm, but it also just flew off right away. At the same time, my younger brother was doing the same with owl number three, but it cooperated much better, and he got to hold it for a couple minutes.
We watched them do several more owls, and I, being surprised at how many they caught, asked, “Is this normal?”
“Yes,” the bander replied, “we usually get about thirty owls in one evening, but one night last October we caught over one hundred owls!”
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “You must have been up late.”
“Yes,” she replied. “It was about 1:00 a.m. when we were done that night.”
When they had finished with that batch of owls, and Anthony and Greg had each gotten to hold one, they headed home, planning to stop and take some pictures of the full moon over the lake. We headed for home also, but it took longer than we had expected.
We were just crossing the Big Creek bridge about seven minutes from the banding station when the car engine sputtered. “Oh no,” Nicholas groaned. “We’re out of fuel.”
We were able to limp another mile/kilometer or two before we came to a complete stop. We were only about sixty yards/meters from a gas station, but, of all things, it was closed for renovations.
Thankfully, we had our older brother Andrew’s cell phone along, so we called home, explained our dilemma to Mom, and asked her to send Andrew out with a can of fuel. I hung up, and just like that the cell phone’s battery died. Whew!
Thankfully, we had a can of fuel at home for lawn mowers, tillers, etc., and he didn’t have to go and find a fuel station that was open at that hour. In about twenty minutes Andrew arrived, poured in the fuel, and the good ol’ car started right up.
As I hopped in with Andrew to drive home, I suggested, “Why don’t you go and see some owls yet. We’re so close anyway. This might be your only chance.”
Andrew is not much of a birder, but he figured he might as well, so we started off for the observatory again. We watched them band an owl, then started off for home again (actually made it this time), with lots of stories to tell.