Toot toot toot
I hear that call for hours on end. I probably have more experience with
saw-whets this fall than anyone in the state, having been out banding them
for 22 nights starting October 5th. I banded 76 of them and had 5
recaptures, three of which came from BC. I ended my season on Veteran's Day,
the following night in which the rain and/or wind pretty much ended the
migration and has been here ever since.
Saw-whets are our most common winter owl. They don't need a lot of extensive
habitat, and Soos Creek isn't the only location to find them in Seattle.
Discovery Park is another option, as is Marymoor Park.
While they respond to the male advertising call (toot toot toot..), they
generally at this time of year do not respond with that call, but rather
with chirps, wails, banshee cries, or a silent fly-by. By far females are
more responsive than males, though without the bird in hand for
measurements, sexing them in the field without hearing one is unlikely.
Most of my detections outside of my banding station are by hearing a chirp
that announces the presence of a saw-whet. Occasionally I will see the
silhouette of a bird as it flies overhead. But if you really want to see
one, then a day roost (think Bridgeport State Park) is a better possibility
until February when the males start tooting back in response to a call. Most
of my visuals are in the late January through February time frame, though I
have taken groups out in the past in October and had visuals. Day roosts on
this side of the Cascades are difficult to find due to the many options
available. I have never found one, though I had a nesting pair in 1996
behind my house.
Saw-whets generally do not become active until about an hour after sunset
and tend to shut down about an hour before dawn. They do not play in wind,
rain, snow, sleet or hail. They are also usually tree huggers and bury
themselves in vegetation and are skittish with lights.
This fall the numbers of saw-whets I captured was on par with last year's
migration, though the ratio of young to adults was vastly different. Last
year's ratio indicated a very good breeding season, and this year's ratio
was indicative of a rather poor year.
Toot toot toot.
-Jamie
J. Acker
owler at sounddsl.com <mailto:
owler at sounddsl.com>
Bainbridge Island, WA
From: Tweeters <
tweeters-bounces at mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of
Tim Brennan
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2020 3:03 PM
To:
tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] NSWO and Soos Creek
Hey Tweets!
I guess I had not quite anticipated the flood of emails about Northern
Saw-whet Owls at Soos Creek. I thought I'd throw out some general statements
before tackling individual emails.
1) I've never seen a Northern Saw-whet Owl on the Soos Creek Trail. And I
know, some people right now are puzzled, "But you said. . . ". For
clarification, when I go out for owls, I'll usually try for them in the wee
hours. There may be some wisdom to dawn and dusk with some species - I
really can't speak to that. I will call for them - most of the calls I'm
able to imitate, but there are of course apps out there to help with this.
If I whistle a saw-whet tune and get a saw-whet tune coming back to me from
the distance. . . maybe I'm weird and less of a bird"watcher", but I'm
pretty happy just knowing that they are there. Keep playing, play louder,
bring out the spotlights and. . . sure, you can see them. It's just a level
of effort and disturbance that doesn't hold a lot of interest for me.
Many of the emails had that theme - "I've heard them, but never seen them,
and would love to." But after getting "I've heard them on Soos Creek, but
never seen them - where's your spot?", I thought it was probably time to be
extra clear on that.
2) I have seen a saw-whet once in my life - at a cemetery in winter in
Yakima County. In Eastern Washington, owls can often be found day-roosting
in some favored spots. For people that really want the visuals, this is a
far better bet, and eBird (once it is back up) can provide some nice leads
for places where you can poke around some sparse trees, and look for those
day roosters.
3) The Soos Creek trail is, from end to end, a nice place for owls. I have
had Barn, Barred, Great Horned, Northern Saw-whet, and (not in a number of
years) Western Screech-Owls at different points along the trail. They used
to run Owl Prowls there, which did involve flashlights and playback - some
of this was mitigated by the fact that a dozen people or so could enjoy some
owls with a single disturbance "event", I suppose. The increase of Barred
Owls in the area, and other factors seem to have led to WESO's moving out,
so I do want to be thoughtful about smaller owls in the area.
4) With the first 4... then 8... emails I got, I didn't really know what to
do. Tell everyone individually where to go, and have them all hit the same
spot at different times? Organize something where we could all pile into
cars together and try for the owls? Lots of bad options, I guess. We shot
some emails back and forth, and I vaguely suggested that if people wanted to
try to at least coordinate between each other some times to investigate the
area together, it would be a nice impact-reducing step.
5) Is this really the only place where any NSWO regularly sets up shop in
the area? Or do people just not go out to try for owls all that often? When
I hit other counties in the state, I will almost always do some focused
owling. NSWO is one that has shown up in all five of the counties I've
focused on in recent years (Mason, Chelan, Snohomish, Yakima, Lewis). This
may be a piece of why I was surprised by the flood of emails!
Man, there might be points 6-10, but this is already a bit long! Apologies
if I am slow in responding, and hopefully this will lead to some good
general posts about owls, and NSWO in particular.
Cheers,
Tim
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