Friday October 16th is ECO Bird Banding Night at North Branch Nature Center on Elm St. in Montpelier!
All ECO students and their families as well as classroom teachers to join in the fun. That includes all Twinfield families of elementary students. This would be a great outing for mentors and mentees too!
From 7-11 p.m. we will be banding Northern Saw Whet Owls during their fall migration.
Topping the scales at 4-5 oz, and standing as tall as a red squirrel, these owls are the cutest fluff balls to grace the sky. Where mice and other small mammals are concerned, however, this fierce, silent owl is anything but cute. The banding demonstration is led by nature center staff and there will be a warming fire nearby.
Saw Whet Owls migrate individually but follow the weather pattern of the cool weather during the dark moon at this time of year. In order to band the birds, naturalists set up a net that catches them during their nighttime migration, and handle them carefully to put a nearly weightless band around the ankle.
Here is a video from a saw whet owl banding in Virginia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-u60PKsxG0
The call you hear in the beginning of the video is the Saw Whet Call, even thought it sounds like a truck backing up!
Hope to see you there!
~Twinfield ECO teachers Angie Barger, Carrie Riker, Amy Butler and Liza Earle-Centers
Educating Children Outdoors (ECO) is a standards based nature immersion program that works in collaboration with public school teachers and their students. We are a program of the North Branch Nature Center