Opening Night September 15th
Usually on the first night of the Northern Saw-whet Owl monitoring season there isn’t much anticipation of banding any owls. At best, the teams would hope that 1 or 2 owls would be banded on opening night.
Most of us who have been involved with Rocky Point Bird
Observatory for several years have spent many a night during the first week
recording zero owls during the sessions. We just don’t know what the owls are
doing from a migration point of view.
But then all that is forgotten when a night like September
15, 2026, happens and all the records are broken, not for one RPBO owl banding station, but both!
I was the bander at the Rocky Point station on night one and who (pun intended) would have thought that while opening the nets for the first time and making some adjustments, owls would start to arrive within minutes? Heck, it wasn’t even fully dark, yet when I heard there were 4 owls in nets 5 & 8! Sure enough, as I approached the nets, I could see the distinguishable silhouettes of NSWO’s.
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| Rocky Point's 1st NSWO of the season |
The first owl banded this season was a hatch year (HY - born in 2026) of unknown sex. On this opening night 92% of the owls banded were also HY.
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| A NSWO hanging around the Rocky Point station after being released |
From that point on it was a steady stream of owls being extracted and brought to the banding station and it didn’t stop until net closing 6 hours later. When it was all said and done the Rocky Point banding station set a record of 51 owls banded on opening night.
Jannaca Chick (NSWO Bander-in-Charge) was at the Pedder Bay banding station on opening night. Jannaca reported that once everything at the station was set up and running and some minor adjustments to the nets were made, they didn’t have to wait long to see the first owl. Although not as quickly as Rocky Point, one hour after net opening the first owl of the season appeared at Pedder Bay and it was a beautiful HY female.
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| Pedder Bay's 1st NSWO of the season |
When the team returned to check the nets on the next round 20 minutes later, imagine their surprise when they discovered six owls waiting for them in the nets! After that it was a steady pace of owls for the rest of the night. Pedder Bay also set a record for the most owls banded on an opening night – with a whopping 29! They were all HY owls (97%), born this year, except for a single older female. A surprising and exciting start to the season!
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| Jannaca banding at Pedder Bay on night #1 |
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| NSWO's after leaving the release box at Pedder Bay |
The previous record for opening night of NSWO’s banded at RPBO was back in 2017 when the Rocky Point station banded 40 owls and the Pedder Bay station banded 15 owls for a total of 55 owls. 2026 now has the honor of holding the new opening night record for both stations with Rocky Point banding 51 and Pedder Bay banding 29 for an amazing, mind-boggling total of 80 owls!!!
Who indeed let the owls out!??
Week #1 Summary
The NSWO visitor program also started this week at the Pedder Bay station, operating from Friday to Monday. A total of 76 visitors visited the banding station and each night the visitors got to experience numerous owls being banded.
To experience the owl banding at Pedder Bay register at:
https://rpbo.org/what-we-do/community-education/calendar/
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| Visitors at the Pedder Bay station |
Each year both banding stations at RPBO catch other species of owls in the nets, not just NSWO. This season the Rocky Point station captured their first Barred Owl (BAOW) on September 18th - a HY male. A few nights later 2 more BAOW’s were caught in quick succession at Rocky Point, a HY female and male.
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| Rocky Point HY male BAOW on September 18th |
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| Rocky Point HY female BAOW on September 20th |
Typically, from previous years statistics at RPBO it can be expected that for every 50 NSWO’s that are banded, one BAOW will also be banded. For 2026 we are slightly below that average, but we are expecting to see more BAOW’s as the season progresses.
The rest of week #1 continued to produce very good numbers of owls being banded at both stations. Rocky Point tends to band more owls compared to Pedder Bay and the same is true this year. Rocky Point did experience some high winds on September 21st and needed to close the nets early for the night which resulted in only 2 owls being banded.
Week #1 totals for Rocky Point were 180 NSWO's banded with 6 recaptures from this year and also previous years. 3 BAOW's were also banded and they were all HY.
Week #1 totals for Pedder Bay were 105 NSWO's banded with 2 recaptures from this year.
How does week #1 rank compared to previous years? Combined, 2026 week #1 had a total of 285 NSWO's and it ranks as our 3rd best start to a season behind 2017 (398) and 2023 (301). Still, a very good start to the NSWO season at Rocky Point Bird Observatory.
Both Jannaca and I are using Nocpix Lumi Handheld Thermal
Monoculars this year at the banding stations and in between banding owls I
managed to capture a short thermal image video of NSWO’s leaving one of our
release boxes. We are looking forward to using the Nocpix more as the season
progresses and hopefully set them up in the owl net lanes to see what is
happening when our team members are not there. Who knows what the cameras will
record??
A big shout out to the volunteers who have been able to come out and spend a good part of the night at the banding stations. They truly are night owls!!
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| Anne Cotter mending a net in between extracting owls |
Until next week … Happy Hooting!!