At 10:04 PM 3/8/97 -0800, you wrote:
>On a tangent to the discussion of "hooting" for owls, I'm curious as to
>what kind of calls people have heard Saw-whets making. I have only heard
>them 2 or 3 times in Alaska and the call was a steady beep-beep-beep like a
>little back-up bell.

My only sighting of saw-whets was on Sucia island in the San Juans. A group
of 8 birds came through the woods to our camp at night making a wonderful
file to steel wooosssssshhhhh. When they were all around it was very
disorienting with the call bouncing back an forth. They spent a minute or
two, long enough to find a flash light, and then moved on. They seemly did
not like the light.
Michael Kennedy <mkennedy at waypt.com>
Port Townsend, WA, USA