Don't go chasing saw-whet owls

Just stick to the parks and cemeteries you're used to. (Or go banding with Project Owlnet.)

Welcome to Owl My Children, a monthly newsletter where I recount an exciting bird moment from the past month and describe the plot of a children’s sci-fi book.

I recently realized that I have been writing this newsletter for over two years. I started writing it in November of 2022, when I still lived in Wisconsin. I worried that I wouldn’t have enough to write about, but somehow my list of newsletter ideas continues to grow. Michael also has a habit of coming up with topics for me, to the point that he even made a shared Note in the Notes app so he can send me all his great ideas. His most recent one: “Owl mouths: They’re not where you think.”

The hardest part of writing a monthly newsletter? NOT writing about owls every single month. I did a quick search of my past posts and found that I’ve only written about owls thrice, which I believe shows real restraint. I love owls so much.

The second-hardest part is that I can never remember which photos I’ve already shown you, and I’m too lazy to scroll through previous posts to make sure there are no duplicates. Oh well!

In honor of my two-year newsletter-iversary, here comes yet another owl post.

Remember that time two years ago when my friend was visiting me and I made her wear an owl costume that I’d made out of a paper bag?

It’s the hap-happiest season of owls

Northern saw-whet owls start migrating at the end of October and into November and early December. Well, some of them do. Some decide to stay where they are, while others travel great distances south or simply to lower elevations. It’s believed that female saw-whets migrate at a higher rate than males, who usually stick to the breeding grounds. (I picture a lone male shivering on a tree branch in Minnesota, his beak chattering. He whispers to himself, “At least I’ll be on time for breeding season.”)

We don’t know much about what these owls are up to, because they’re teeny tiny (7.1-8.3 inches in length) and adorably secretive. Birders lovingly refer to their call as a “toot toot” sound, but they don’t often vocalize outside of their breeding season, and they’re also nocturnal, so if you want to find one while you’re out birding… Good luck.

The first and only time I ever saw a northern saw-whet owl in the wild (apart from owl banding, which I’ll explain later), I did not find the owl myself. My friend did, because she is an amazing birder and understands what birds like and where they might hide. It was late 2021, daytime, and the owl was perched on a very sheltered branch at about eye-level, getting in a quick snooze before dusk, at which point it would (presumably) fly out and do some mouse-murdering.

My friend pointed out the owl to me. She said, “Do you see it?” But it was so camouflaged and SMALL that I simply could not see what she was talking about. She said again, “Do you see it yet?” and I was like, “No, I really do not. I don’t believe there is an owl here.”

Finally it sunk in that the Beanie Baby-sized brown bump on the branch really was a saw-whet owl, and I almost screamed in excitement. Instead I just stood there in the owl’s presence and felt like I might have a heart attack. You could put this owl in a teacup! You could put it inside a Russian doll! You could tuck it in your pocket and take it on a plane and let it see the world and no one would be the wiser!

At the time, I had not yet acquired my camera, so I took no pictures. (But other birders eventually did, and you can see their photos here.) We didn’t want to disturb the owl, so after a few seconds of standing there in awe, we crept away down the trail.

It was an important day for me, not just because I saw the most special wonderful thing nature has ever produced, but also because it was one of the first moments I realized that, while birding alone is nice, birding with friends—especially friends who are much better birders than you—is an absolute privilege.

Things I’ve learned about owling

Though I’ve had no luck in finding saw-whet owls in the years since, I feel that I’ve developed a skillset, of sorts, in the art of owling. In particular, I pride myself on being able to find eastern screech-owls (though in reality I’m usually just in the right place at the right time and there’s not much skill involved).

In Pittsburgh, you can find a screech-owl roost pretty easily—for example, by asking a Frick Park ranger, “Do you know where the eastern screech-owl roost is?” And they’ll be like, “Oh yeah!” and they’ll walk you down the path right to it. (This did not happen in Madison. I have learned that the urban owls of Pittsburgh are not very well kept secrets, maybe because their roosts are pretty obvious and in very public places. Or maybe because people are more willing to share owl locations here. It’s hard to say.)

I’ve also had luck finding screech-owls outside of their nest cavities, thanks to other birds mobbing them. Mobbing is when a bunch of small birds join forces to harass a predator bird. They make little heckling noises and dive-bomb the predator or lift their tails in scary displays of rage. And they don’t quit until the predator decides it’s not worth sticking around.

Small birds do this to defend their territories, protect a food source, or scare predators away from their breeding grounds. Since owls hunt at night, it’s also in the best interest of smaller songbirds to gang up on a sleeping owl during the day, when he doesn’t have his wits about him, and thereby clear him out before darkness falls. There’s a great article explaining mobbing on Cornell’s site here.

When I still lived in Madison, I stumbled upon two off-roost screech-owls in two weeks: one was getting mobbed by grackles, and one was getting mobbed by blue jays. Here in Pittsburgh, I’ve lucked upon screech-owls at Frick Park several times, including once this fall migration, when the owl pictured below was getting mobbed by two blue jays, two bay-breasted warblers, one magnolia warbler, one Carolina wren, and one chickadee. A truly intersectional bird mob.

Caption contest! What is this eastern screech-owl thinking? (Photo by me.)

When you hear or see a group of birds—often an interspecies group—forming a tag team, you should always stop and try to see what’s bothering them. You might find an owl! Or, if you’re in Frick Park, a giant black rat snake! (I know I’ve shared that link before, but I can’t get over it. These snakes can sometimes be found eating eggs out of blue jay nests in the park, which understandably upsets the blue jays.)

A screech getting mobbed by a common grackle, leader of a grackle gang. (Photo by me.)

My birder friends who have had more luck finding saw-whets have recommended that, in addition to paying attention to mobbing birds, I should stay very low to the ground. Like, even lower than eye level. Saw-whets lurk in dark, sheltered places, where they have a chance of evading those spunky chickadees that hate their guts.

Though I’ve seen screech-owls in a variety of trees, saw-whets prefer conifers, including spruce, pine, and cedar trees. They like dense forest habitats with an open understory for hunting. Anecdotally, I like to look in places where there are lots of pine varieties clustered together, preferably with an open field nearby. For example, I’m convinced I’ll find a saw-whet at my local cemetery one day.

Looking for saw-whets. (I don’t actually recommend this.)

A capping ceremony for the modern era

This will seem like it’s not related to owls, but I promise it is. Did you ever read The White Mountains? My sixth-grade teacher had it in her “private collection” which she kept behind her desk, along with the other books in John Christopher’s 1967 series The Tripods. When she let me borrow the book for silent reading time, she told me to keep it a secret because the school library no longer carried it.

This is what I remember about the plot: A boy named Will is about to turn 14. It’s a special age, because in this world, 14-year-olds get swept off by gigantic alien Tripods and “capped,” which means they get their heads shaved and a special metal cap placed permanently on their skulls. (I don’t actually know if they get their heads shaved, but my 11-year-old interpretation included that detail.) Will decides to run away before his capping ceremony.

This book ROCKED MY WORLD. When I got home from school, I talked about the plot at the dinner table, and my dad remembered reading the series when he was a kid, so that also felt special.

I bring this up because in November, I participated in a White Mountains-style capping ceremony, except in this version, northern saw-whet owls were the ones getting capped, and we didn’t put a mind-control helmet on them. Instead, we put little bands on their ankles for science.

Science!

Since saw-whets are so hard to find, no one knew much about their migration patterns until pretty recently. Project Owlnet was started in the 90s so that we could better understand where these owls are going and how many there are. Knowing the distribution can help us protect their habitats and ensure that they’re still around for years to come.

I am lucky enough to live in a place where there are multiple Project Owlnet banding stations, including one led by the National Aviary’s Ornithologist.* Banding sessions happen three times a week from October to December and are open to the public.

My friend Elizabeth, a wonderful birder and writer, encouraged me to try it out this year. One night in November, she and her husband met me and Michael at Sewickley Heights Borough Park in the pitch dark (it was only 7 PM) and led us to the picnic table where the banders had set up their supplies. It was an extremely welcoming group. They immediately offered us pizza. The more we learned about their commitment to this project—which happens in both the fall and spring, in the cold and the dark, and lasts from about 6PM until after midnight three nights a week—the more impressed we became.

The way banding works is that a mist net is set up in the woods. It’s kind of like a badminton net that you hang in the trees. (You can see examples of mist nets in this article by Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Brings back memories of when I got my braces stuck in a badminton net circa age 10.) The licensed banders rig up a speaker that plays the toot-toot call of a breeding northern saw-whet owl, which causes curious owls to stop by and investigate and maybe land in the net.** The banders wait at a picnic table a 5-minute walk (or so) away.

Every 40 minutes, the banders check the nets. They very carefully remove any owls and carry them back to the picnic table in cotton bags. Each owl is measured to see if it’s healthy and what age it is (you can tell, to a certain extent, by the feathers!). Then a small numbered band, specifically designed to fit the leg of a saw-whet, is placed around its ankle, and the owl gets released back into the night.

If we found an owl that already had a band on its leg, we’d record the numbers on the band and later look it up in a database to see where it came from. The hope was that the owls we banded in PA might eventually travel to other banding stations, giving scientists a better idea of where the owls were going. And if the owl got recaptured in later years, scientists could also get a bigger picture of where the owl had traveled in its lifetime and how old it was. (Most saw-whets only live a few years in the wild.)

We were told, many times, to keep our expectations low. Being able to catch owls in the mist nets is entirely dependent on wind/weather conditions, and we heard stories of people showing up to owl banding and seeing absolutely nothing all night.

At our first net check at 8 PM, five saw-whets were waiting for us. Michael and I were giddy. At the next check, we had one more, and at the next after that, two more. Over the course of the night, the group captured and released 15 saw-whets, which they said was a tie with their best-ever night.

My face as I viewed a saw-whet owl in the dark. Were there tears? Perhaps.

As amazing as it was to see so many saw-whets up close, at the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think of The White Mountains. What did the owls think, bathed in the red glow of our headlamps, surrounded by giant alien people who scooped them up and put permanent bracelets on their legs? Were we the Tripods??

But I was reassured by a few things: 1) the gentle and caring way the banders handled the birds; 2) the fact that all banders are certified (which is a rigorous process) and in many cases they have to get several permits, and then they must also follow a code of ethics; 3) the fact that the bands they use are custom-made to perfectly fit a saw-whet owl; 4) knowing that scientists continue to do studies to ensure that birds are not adversely affected by banding. Also, the Project Owlnet banders have devoted much more of their lives to helping birds than I have. I trust them to know what they’re doing.

Sorry I can’t show you photos of a saw-whet. I haven’t taken any. But other folks have added their banding photos to the Sewickley Heights Borough Park eBird database here, which I recommend scrolling through if you want to see some science in action.

One day, maybe I’ll find a saw-whet on my own. Or maybe I’ll just let them be, and I’ll rest easy knowing they’re out there somewhere, toot-tooting.

Owl my best,

Holly (Howlly) (Hootly) (Hoo-hoolly)

PS: Did you hear it might be a snowy owl irruption year? I took this snowy owl photo in downtown Madison the last time we had an irruption year. Already this year, a snowy owl was reported in my hometown of Hillsboro, Ohio, which is quite far south for a snowy!

---

*Federally-permitted researchers safely band and recapture northern saw-whet owls to study the species over time. All owl banding is conducted with the required federal (USGS) and state (PGC) bird banding permits.

**Using playback to attract birds is highly controversial and was only done by permitted banders in this case.