Congratulations to Stu Mackenzie and long point for catching a boreal owl thought I would chime in that we caught 6 on Sunday night( Nov 2nd) and this has me very confused. We had ended our sawwhet migration monitoring and had captured 7 boreals while playing a sawwhet call. In 2 nights of playing a boreal call on 1 of our sites, we have captured 8 boreals. This begs the question of how we would do with a boreal call. Birders may not be aware that there is speculation that the boreals show up in 4 year intervals. We have been banding owls since 200 and we have captured boreal in 2000 1 11 in 2004 and now 15 in 2008 and none in any of the intervening years. Whitefish point bird observatory and Thunder Cape bird observatory may be able to shed some more light on this topic as I am sure could Tadoussac in Quebec who have more familiarity with the boreal owl. I would point out though how impressed I am that the winter finch forecast based on Ron Pittway’s research predicted a boreal invasion this year base on a rodent crash in the north. Does the rodent cycle link to the boreal every 4 years? If it does can we at long last see grade 10 students drawing vole and owls graphs instead of snowshoe hare and lynx graphs ???? Just a suggestion to text book writers. Hope long point can get another boreal this season Well done to Stu and his gang most impressive.
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