2022

With how successful the 2021 season was, another, shorter season was added for 2022. Alex Lauber, Jeff Mach, and I lead the project with specific goals to finish within three weeks. The first was to clear the overgrown vegetation around all 230 burrows (92 sites). Next was to capture all adults at the depot and collect wing photographs of known-age birds. The pictures were collected to see if we can accurately determine the age of Burrowing Owls based on the barring throughout the wing. Another goal was to get an audio recording of every known-age male burrowing owl to add to a study to see if family lineages inherit calls. We accomplished all our tasks while on the study site, and I immediately left for Montana for another job. There, in eastern Montana, my co-worker, Jeff Wilson, and I were tasked with surveying for Burrowing Owl nest burrows and mapping them. That included scoping the burrows and looking for counts of eggs or young. The Burrowing Owls here would use natural burrows made by prairie dogs. Going from prairie town to prairie town, scouting for about a month, was a thrill.