Tim,



I was about to ask where Soos Creek was, but in his response, Jamie Acker
mentioned that it was in Seattle. In future, when mentioning birding
localities, PLEASE state in which city or county they are located. Not all
of us live in Seattle!!



Where was this flood of emails about N Saw-whet Owls? Was it somewhere other
than Tweeters? I did not get any such emails.



Finally, if you want to SEE Northern Saw-whets, probably the best spot
around is the Reifel Bird Sanctuary near Vancouver, BC (that is, when
Americans are able to visit Canada again). At any given time from October
through at least March, there are usually between 1 and 5 Saw-whets roosting
in the conifers there, and the staff can usually tell you where to look.
They are not there in the breeding season, only in the winter half-year. In
the last 50 years, I don't think I have ever gone through a year without
seeing Saw-whets several times, most often at Reifel.



As Jamie Acker says, Northern Saw-whets are probably the most common owl in
the area. They do breed right down to sea level, although they prefer
continuous conifer forest for breeding habitat, and therefore do not breed
in places like Reifel. They are certainly harder to see than most owls,
although they will come into view in response to recorded calls. (I have
been dive-bombed more than once at night by a Saw-whet responding to a
recorded call.) The best way of seeing one is probably to go with a group
looking specifically for owls, with a leader familiar with Saw-whets, so
that we don't have dozens of people searching for owls on their own, and
needlessly disturbing the owls. Hopefully, there are a few people willing to
lead such trips in various parts of the state. Mike Denny's "Owls by Day"
trips near Walla Walla are a good example of such trips, and I hope there
are birders willing to lead such trips occasionally in other parts of
Washington.



Wayne Weber

Delta, BC

contopus at telus.net











From: Tweeters [mailto: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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