photos: AVEO bird banding volunteer and star photographer Byard Miller

This autumn, AVEO is thrilled to partner with Antioch University New England graduate student and experienced bird bander Chris Volonte on the first-ever Northern Saw-whet Owl banding project in southwest New Hampshire!  Chris has spent every clear night since late September with teams of AVEO volunteers, setting and checking owl nets at four stations throughout Cheshire County.   Considered by many avid birders to be a “once in a lifetime” species, Northern Saw-whet Owls seem rare, but they’re not; these secretive, tiny predators simply keep well hidden in dense vegetation, where they quietly hunt for mice and other prey from low branches.

To date, Chris has caught 168 Saw-whet Owls (!!!!), on their way from Canada and the northern United States to warmer climes, where it’s not quite so hard to hear a mouse scampering under the snow.   In addition to banding 159 owls, Chris and her teams have caught five owls that were previously banded in other parts of the northeast; two of Chris’s owls were also re-captured further south on their journey.

This program is sure to become one of AVEO’s most interesting pursuits!  Click here to read the Keene Sentinel feature on Chris’s work.  To learn more about owls and owl banding, click on these links to visit Project Owlnet and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  To help keep AVEO volunteers involved in fascinating, vital field research, please support AVEO using our new secure online donation button: