Last February, I posted a story about going with Tom LeBlanc to help out with a Short-eared Owl banding project. You can read about it by clicking the picture below:
Chuck Rosenburg from the Department of Environmental Conservation sent this email update recently:
Hi. Here’s an update about the short-eared owl project. Please see the attached map showing the general route our satellite-monitored owl traveled from the time of its capture in Niagara County on Feb 9, 2008 through to its probable breeding area in Labrador. It was tracked in the same general location in Labrador from May 30 through the end of September. Unfortunately, we lost contact with the owl in late September, when it was still in Labrador. It looks like the owl perished or the transmitter went dead for some reason, which is disappointing of course. But we are thrilled about the wealth of location data it provided. We hope to get at least one more satellite transmitter to use this winter, so it will be interesting to see what new data we can gather.
They have been spotting Short-eared Owls in our area already this winter. If you live near large fields or grasslands in Central New York and would like to help out with the study, contact Chuck. His contact information is on the PDF file which you can download by clicking here.
Amazing what we can do and what info can be gathered with todays technology.
I wonder what this data is going to be used for? I hope we aren’t putting the birds through this ordeal just because we have the technology to do so.