Dear Tweets,

Some may remember a query I posted in September, asking for
information about the status of Barn Owl on the Olympic Peninsula.
My wife and I had just seen one at dusk between Copalis Crossing and
Humptulips. This was a bit farther north than one might have
expected to find this species, which raised the possibility that Barn
Owls might be found farther north still in the little-birded
landscape of cut-over land, scattered clearings and human
settlements, and (mostly) varying-age stands of planted Douglas-firs
stretching mile after mile along the lower west slope of the
Olympics. Several people replied, and I promised myself to get off a
summary before the end of the year. This is it.

First off, not a single record was reported north of the one we saw
until all the way up along the Juan de Fuca coast. Does this prove
anything other than that this area and habitat have received little
birding coverage, at least nocturnally? There's no way of telling.

Sentiment is that the range of Barn Owl as predicted by Gap for this
part of Washington is quite accurate. Gap says it should occur up to
about three miles north of Grays Harbor, and the bird JoLynn and I
saw was only about six or seven miles north of Grays Harbor -- hardly
a range extension.

Where is the Olympic Peninsula anyway? West of Hood Canal and north
of a line between Olympia and the top of Grays Harbor would probably
be included in anybody's definition, but an expanded definition might
see the huge area south of the peninsula proper from the ocean over
to the foot of the east slope of the coastal range at about Kelso to
be part of it, and even the Kitsap Peninsula.

Within the narrowly-defined area, I received reports of Barn Owls
*only* from the lowlying "north coast." Michael Hobbs saw one
outside Sequim in August 1997. Bob Norton reports them about three
miles inland from Crescent Bay and at several localities eastward
from there, from near Elwha on over toward Sequim. Stan and Dory
Smith found Barn Owls 11 months out of 12 in the Sequim area from
1975 to 1996. Stan also notes that the Sequim CBC averaged two Barn
Owls per year in the 1990s with a high of six. The most thorough,
and unique, report for this area was Ken Knittle's. Ken was the milk
tester for the Olympic Peninsula from 1978-1982 and visited all of
the dairies on a monthly schedule. He reports: "Most dairies had
Barn Owls around since I was at each dairy in the middle of the
night. They are a common bird there, just most people are sleeping
when Barn Owls aren't. My area of milk testing was west to the Elwha
River east to Sequim Bay. They were comnmonest between Sequim and
Port Angeles. There used to be dairies out west as far as the
turnoff to Ozette Lake in the 1950s and I would think Barn Owls could
easily have been that far west."

Anyone who is interested in learning more about the distribution of
Barn Owl in Washington should definitely contact Ken. He listed
numerous personal records from various parts of the state where this
species is otherwise largely undocumented.

Other reports of Barn Owl from the "Greater Peninsula" came from
Littlerock in Thurston County (Michelle Blanchard); from Lewis
County, where Bill Lawrence believes he "can on some arm twisting
produce two records of barnys"; from Bainbridge Island and from
Silverdale on the Kitsap Peninsula (Jamie Acker); and from the Ocean
Shores peninsula and near Westport (Gene Hunn). Barn Owl is found
about one year in two on the Grays Harbor CBC.

Good luck and good owling for 2000 and the coming millennium!

Hal Opperman
Medina, Washington
mailto:halop at accessone.com