Volunteers led by wildlife biologist Hillary Siener of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation have captured 153 saw-whet owls for banding and tracking in the two years since starting their research project, which is a part of a larger effort to track owl movement patterns called Project Owlnet.

In a virtual program hosted by the Harris Center for Conservation Education Monday night, Siener presented the results of the 2022 and 2023 fall seasons.

She reported two “same season” encounters, which means an owl banded by another team found its way to a Harris Center banding station later that year, or vice versa. A saw-whet owl originally banded at a capture site in Nelson was captured 24 nights later in Pennington, traveling a straight-line distance of 230 miles, and an owl originally banded in Quebec was caught 19 nights later at the Nelson site, a distance of 375 miles. This southward movement is typical of birds as winter approaches.

In 2023, the team captured three saw-whets that were banded the previous year. One was originally tagged in Newark, Md., one in Newton Square, Pa., and another in Grafton, W. Va. The owl from Maryland was tagged on Halloween 2022, and was recaptured in New Hampshire exactly one year later. Siener speculated why this owl was found so much farther north compared to the previous year on the same date.

“This could suggest a number of different things,” Siener said.

The owl had hatched in 2022, and previous studies have shown hatch-year birds tend to migrate earlier than older ones. It could also indicate the saw-whets’ migration was delayed in 2023, which is corroborated by data from the Harris Center and other Project Owlnet research sites. 

“We also have learned that [saw-whet owls] are more nomadic in terms of where they end up during breeding and wintering seasons, and are unlikely to return to the exact same site year after year,” Siener said.

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To know for sure, they would need to capture the owl again to gather additional data, or attach more equipment to precisely track the owl’s movements. 

“As our project continues into the future, more same-season and inter-season captures will continue to add to our knowledge base of rate of travel, direction of movement, migration routes, and perhaps it will even pick up on their nomadic tendencies as well,” Siener said.

Saw-whet owls are the smallest owls in the Northeast – about the size of an American robin – and nocturnal, which makes them challenging to study, despite their abundance in northern North American forests. Historically, tracking the owls’ movement has proven especially difficult, and efforts to better understand their short-distance fall migration patterns have only begun relatively recently. 

For information about saw-whet owls and Harris Center programs, visit harriscenter.org.