Record-breaking owl migration in northern B.C. leaves bird banders scrambling
Bird banders in northern British Columbia are experiencing a record-breaking owl migration surge, catching 266 northern saw-whet owls compared to the usual 100. This population boom has created a shortage of tracking bands and is likely driven by an abundance of small rodent prey.
Why it matters
Unusual wildlife migration spikes and prey availability provide important ecological data for monitoring regional bird populations.
"It has been such an amazing year up there," said Jeannine Randall, a bird biologist for the Mackenzie Nature Observatory, about 200 kilometres north of Prince George via major highways.
"We usually catch about 100, and we've caught 266 for the season right now with two weeks still left to go. So it's a record-breaking year."
The unprecedented surge led to an unusual problem: a shortage of the official, strictly controlled, tracking bands used to monitor the birds.
"We were running out, in particular, of one of the sizes — because saw-whet owls, which is the main species we target, take more than one size of bands," Randall explained.
"We were running out of the larger size of band because they were back-ordered from the bird banding office."
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