2024

2024 was a full and rewarding year, with fieldwork stretching from February through December. It took me to new places and introduced me to many new faces along the way. So, with that being said, let’s start in February. The 16th field season for the Burrowing Owl demography study was organized, including two new core members: Solai LeFay and Gabriela Mendez. Solai joined as a new master’s student, with her research on the Burrowing Owls at the Depot. Previously, she had worked with other owl species through the Owl Research Institute. Gabriela came all the way from Brazil, where she had previously worked with owls for her master’s. Together, the three of us were ecstatic to lead the season.

In February, Solai and I left for northeast Oregon for a week’s worth of prep work on the Depot. Others from the Oregon National Guard and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation joined us. The days were spent clearing the artificial burrows and upgrading sites with better-designed burrows. The mild winter led to an abundance of male owls that stayed and wintered in the study area.

In April, I joined Dave Oleyar and others for a week in southeast Arizona for the HawkWatch Following Forest Owls program. Here, we surveyed for the six small owls of study and even caught a few, including an Elf Owl on my 21st birthday. What a present!

The start of the BUOW season came flying in with the start of May. Gabriela, Solai, and I quickly determined that it was going to be a special year, not just for the connection we had together, but also for the abundance of owls on the Depot. Every site we checked had a nest, and by the end of the year, we had recorded over 100 nests and over 500 young. What a record-shattering year. Within the season, a few others made appearances, including DJ! For the final three weeks of May, DJ, along with Joris De Raedt (a fabulous scientific illustrator from Belgium), Anahi Formoso (a passionate biologist from Argentina), and Dries Van Nieuwenhuyse (a master statistician with a focus on wildlife research), joined us in the field for daily tasks and a few side projects. Lindsay Chiono (a wildlife habitat ecologist with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation) frequently joined us in the field as well.

While Solai and Gabriela wrapped up the final two weeks of the BUOW season, I made my way to Arizona, once again joining Dave Oleyar and Kassandra Townsend in the field. We worked with citizen scientists from Earthwatch to research the six focal owl species — Elf Owl, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Flammulated Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Whiskered Screech-Owl, and Western Screech-Owl. You can find out more about this program by visiting HawkWatch International’s website.

A few weeks later, in July, I was able to join the incredible Marcus Mika on the northern Following Forest Owl study site in Utah. Here, Flammulated Owls are the main focus of study as they are abundant in the study area. This was my first hands-on experience with this species, as well as the Northern Saw-whet Owl. The beauty of both species stood out to me in their own unique ways. The new experiences and skills I gained from my short period here are invaluable to me.

In early December, I finished my finals for the fall term and headed to Aruba, a small island country in the southern Caribbean. Here, I joined an eager team on a mission to collect morphological data on the endemic subspecies of the Burrowing Owl found in Aruba. The team consisted of DJ, Anahi, Dries, and me again, but also some new faces, including Lauren Meads and Lia McKinnon (both from the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC), Keith Swindle and Rachel Neville (two experienced and insightful biologists), Cynthia Steiner (a genetics guru from the San Diego Zoo), and Greg Peterson (the director of the local non-profit Aruba Birdlife Conservation). Together, we made our way around the island collecting crucial data for the conservation of the Burrowing Owl.