MA - Northern Saw-whet Owls

Northern Saw-whet Owl. Montague, Franklin County, MA. November 2nd, 2009. Taken with Canon Powershot A590, no additional optical aids.

My introduction to the smallest owl in the Eastern US was on a freezing January night on Nantucket, thirty miles south of Cape Cod. That night, back in 1998, is still amongst my favorite birding memories. Susannah and I had arranged to go owling with Frank Gallo, but by 9:15 pm Frank hadn't showed up. We'd just about settled in for the night when Frank drove up in an open-sided jeep, driving with his shirt sleeves rolled up and no gloves - it was below 20 degrees F and we wondered what sort of evening we were getting ourselves into! Even worse, Frank drove us to what looked like a set of playing fields surrounded by a few pines and thickets. Surely this wasn't the place for saw-whet owls? We were then marched down a track, tennis courts on one side and pines on the other. He began whistling apparently trying to imitate a saw-whet song. I must admit at that point I really questioned our decision to leave our cozy hotel room. But in less than a couple of minutes Frank had two Northern Saw-whet Owls calling back and forth, and even spotlighted them several times for views. It was an amazing experience, and being relatively new to birding in the US, I was convinced that I could do the same thing and call up my own saw-whets when ever I came across a nice belt of pine trees! I couldn't have been more wrong. Frank had made it look easy. He knew exactly where to look, how to call them and exactly the time of night to see them. Since that first 'Frank Gallo experience' I've had relatively little success in seeing the bird in the field myself. I find this pretty remarkable considering the amount of field hours that I've logged, especially in the New England area. Veit and Petersen describe it as "uncommon" in Massachusetts, but in this video Scott Weidensaul describes it as"incredibly common". Intrigued, I've taken on a self-motivated 'study' to try and find out a little more about this owl's winter distribution and habitat preferences in my local area. Broadly speaking that's Hampshire and Franklin Counties, mostly within thirty minutes driving time from our home in Amherst. Thus far, with the help of some generous owl enthusiasts, I've now found them in the towns of South Amherst (2), Amherst (1), Shutesbury (2), Montague (1), Leverett (1) and Hatfield (1). The effort in finding them is considerable and I'm growing to accept no more than a 33% success rate. Actual sightings are rare and most observations are of the heard-only type. Thankfully, the owls have a distinct range of vocals with most of the calls being relatively easy to recognize.

Northern Saw-whet Owl. Montague, Franklin County, MA. November 2nd, 2009. Taken with Canon Powershot A590, no additional optical aids.

Of major interest has been the discovery of other owls whilst trying to coax saw-whets to respond. Just over the last few days I've seen Great Horned, Barred and Eastern Screech Owls all being drawn in some way to saw-whet imitations.

Eastern Screech-Owl. Red phase, Woods Hole, Cape Cod, MA. November 7th, 2009. Beautifully hidden,
this bird responded quite aggressively to a commercial sound recording of Northern Saw-whet Owl. I wasn't looking for screech-owls at the time. Taken with Canon Powershot A590, no additional optical aids.

Eastern Screech-Owl. Red phase, Woods Hole, Cape Cod, MA. November 7th, 2009. Crop from above image. Taken with Canon Powershot A590, no additional optical aids.


Barred Owl. Shutesbury, Franklin County, MA. November 11th, 2009. This bird flew in silently straight over my head and landed above the trail just a few meters in front of me when I was imitating Northern Saw-whet calls. Just seconds earlier, I heard a saw-whet call a couple of times deep into the woods off the trail. Taken with Canon Powershot A590, no additional optical aids.

Over the course of the winter I'm hopeful of discovering more Northern Saw-whet Owls whilst attempting to keep tabs on the birds already found. There's at least some possibility that some birds are simply 'staging' whilst on migration and will not stay throughout the winter. More to come.