Gotcha!

We finally caught another owl this week. It wasn't the one I talked about in my last entry. We went in four times. FOUR TIMES! We still didn't catch that pair.

We DID however catch another bird a couple days later. She was a great bird. We stayed up late the night prior making more backpacks and got up at 3:30 to head out to the site. We walked in on a male bird that was already radioed to see if his female was with him and there she was! Sheila caught her with a snare pole and I got to grab her.

I finally got the experience of seeing/aiding in the process of attaching the radio backpacks to the bird. It's quite complex and very interesting. Sheila was nice and snapped a couple pics of me with the bird before we let her go. She was such a nice bird! Even stuck around for a while before the jays mobbed her.

It's not the greatest pic, but keep in mind.. It's WAY early and I had maybe a couple hours of sleep under my belt!! :) (That and being wired from a bunch of coffee)

Throw Me a Bone Here!

Ok, so the last time I made an entry, I was griping about not seeing any owls. Well, that weekend we were hanging out and heard two male owls hooting outside our barracks (we have two owl sites close to Blodgett). One came in closer. We ran out and played with him. Maybe the owls were throwing me a bone and coming in for a glimpse. :)

Last weekend we went to Bassi Falls near one of our sites. It was WAY easy to get to and was pretty cool. The water was FREAKING cold, but it was fun climbing all around on the rocks and "frollicking" with my partners-in-crime.
"Frollicking indeed"

Yesterday we were going out to catch an owl pair, but we found some cross-country bikers that were trying to get to a highway from the forest road we were on. It’s still snowed in up to that intersection. They had to turn back. When we came across them it was getting really dark and was quite cold out. Poor ladies. They looked so cold!! Needless-to-say, we didn’t get to our site ‘til WAY late and didn’t find the birds.

We stayed the night at our last site and did a morning walk-in on our owls. Found them. They were too wary and “chicken-shit” for us to catch this morning so we’re trying again tonight when they’ll be hungrier and not so sleepy. (They flew to their roost tree and fell asleep on us! :)

Wish me luck! :)