Despite being off to a slow start, this fall has marked several milestones for Northern Saw-whet Owl banding in northwest Arkansas, and several milestones for Ozark Bird Conservancy.
For starters, it's the 10th banding season for saw-whet owls! That’s so hard to believe and it has been a fun journey with lots of cool, new data collected along the way. Just 10 short years ago, saw-whets were not known to be regular fall migrants or winter residents in the state. Now we know they are both, at least in some areas.
In an effort to continue meaningful migration monitoring—and thanks to collaborators in Oklahoma—we have a set of Motus nanotags to deploy on owls this fall! Many of you may be familiar with the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (https://motus.org/about/). For those who aren’t, this is a really cool open source project. These transmitters are set to a certain VHF frequency and are read by a network of Motus-specific towers.
We have already deployed 2 of our transmitters on owls this fall, as part of a wider effort being undertaken this year to tag the species in eastern North America. The transmitters last up to 2 years and will hopefully provide lots of good data as these birds travel along their migration routes in the coming seasons. You can keep up with our owls and others here <https://motus.org/dashboard/#e=profile&d=species&s=7680&f=%7B%22dtStart%22:%222014-10-02%22,%22dtEnd%22:%222024-11-02%22%7D>. These are the first Motus nanotags deployed on saw-whet owls in Arkansas and are among the first tags deployed on any species in the state.
On the map, you will notice an alarming gap in towers (gray dots) in Arkansas. As you may have heard at the AAS/IBBA meeting last weekend, Arkansas is ranked 49th in the US for Motus towers. In the grand scheme, these towers are only moderately expensive (~$7500 average) for the potential they have in this important tracking network. It seems Motus isn’t going anywhere and will only become increasingly more helpful in monitoring migratory species. In the coming years, Ozark Bird Conservancy hopes to lead the charge in remedying this gap in the state.
We’re really excited about the saw-whet tags we currently have and funding we’ve recently received to purchase more. Additionally, we will soon be pursuing some other owl-specific research objectives in the region as part of both our migratory owl and urban raptor study objectives. With that, we will have some cool opportunities to sponsor this important research!
