Mr. Bichler: Saturday & Sunday ~Owl Symposium~Feb. 16-17

Barn Owl

Great Horned Owl

Gail Laux holding an Eastern Screech Owl

We made it back and I am pooped. Lots of walking, lots of snow and Lots and lots of cold!! But it was beautiful and I loved every minute of it. Saturday morning we had two excellent speakers beginning with Tom Bartlett who had been netting the saw-whet owls the night before. He talked about his work, netting and banding the owls as they pass through Kelly's Island in Lake Erie. He thinks there are as many as a thousand Saw-whet owls that over winter here in Ohio. Following his talk, Gail Laux, the director of the Ohio Bird Sanctuary, brought some of her rehab owls in and gave a very informative talk on owl biology. We saw barn owls, a barred owl, a screech owl and the largest, a great-horned owl. I actually heard a great-horned owl in our woods just last week. I learned that they are powerful hunters and have been known to carry cats and small dogs to their nests to feed to their young. Screech owls, on the other hand, a common and smaller owl that is quite common in Ohio feed on moths, small rodents and occassional songbirds. Our walk yesterday afternoon was not as fruitful as we would have liked, due in large part to the weather. We did see several rough-legged hawks, red-tail hawks, at least 5 bald eagles as well as downy, red-bellied woodpeckers, white and red-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees and some other pretty common birds. The best part was that our guide was Jim McCormac. He is one of the top birders and botonists around and writes a column in the Dispatch twice a month. I have been on walks with him before and he is awesome. It is like being with a walking encyclopedia. Last night after a delicious dinner at the lodge our keynote speaker was Denver Holt, who has been studying the Snowy Owls in Barrow, Alaska. I have been to Barrow so I found his slide show super interesting. The weather last night was not condusive to netting owls so that was cancelled which let us get to bed a little earlier than the night before. This morning we had breakfast and one speaker, Julie Zickefoose, who is super talented. She sings and plays flute in the band, The Rain Crows, she is a biologist and naturalist as well as a wonderful water color artists. She also writes bird articles for the Bird Watchers Digest. At 10 we hit the birding trail once more. The trail we were going to take was deemed too dangerous because of the ice and snow so we checked out some spots where evening grosbeaks and red polls had been seen. The red polls and pine siskins we saw were both life birds for me. We also saw a nesting bald eagle and we visited Malabar Farms. We attempted to call in a barred owl but we think it was just too cold for even an owl to bother responding. By then it was 12:30 and Barb and I decided to head on home. My garmin was being a little testy and decided to bring us home the back way. It was a lovely drive but we never did find I-71 until we were all the way back to Delaware and by then we decided to stay on the back roads all the way to Barb's house.