Idaho Bird Observatory: Part 5

Before heading up to Lucky Peak for my weekend fixin’ of field work, I managed to convince fellow graduate student Rob Miller to let me accompany him on a day of trapping at Boise Peak. Boise Peak is another trapping station run by IBO, and is located approximately 5 miles north of Lucky Peak along the Boise Ridge. Here the business is strictly about trapping raptors, as no songbird or owl work is done, and very few visitors make the drive up the rough, washed out road to the top of the mountain. Boise Peak generally traps fewer birds than Lucky Peak, but the diversity of birds trapped tends to be greater as a lot of Northern Goshawks and larger Falcons are trapped here. We managed to trap 13 birds on Wednesday, including a young Cooper’s Hawk who’s mouth was literally full. His crop was so full of food that it was overflowing out of his mouth, and he still wanted more as he tried to come and take our dove lure! Click on the picture below to get an even closer look. Would you still want to eat more food if you were this full? You might if you still had thousands of miles to travel to your wintering grounds…

On Friday we made our way up to Lucky Peak where we were fortunate enough to be joined in the trapping blind by Merlin Systems founder Ed Levine and Peregrine Fund neotropical raptor biologist Marta Curti. They showed a group of students various telemetry and transmitter equipment used to mark birds in the field to determine their movements. They also showed us how to place these transmitters properly onto birds so as not to harm them. This was accentuated by the fact that 2 more merlins were caught on Friday and Saturday. Along with merlins trapped on Sunday and Monday, Lucky Peak went 4 consecutive days with a merlin trapped, which is outstanding! See part 4 of this blog series for more info on merlins. But just for fun, here is another picture of the merlin we trapped last week.

Saturday night brought out more owl trapping, including more Flammulated Owls! Owl bander Jethro managed to catch 2 Flammulated and 2 Saw-Whet owls before having to close the mist-nets due to high winds. The picture below of one of these Flammulated Owls and might just be the cutest thing you ever saw, these guys are so tiny! How can something so cute be so understudied, with such little known about it’s basic biology? Makes you think.

Neil Paprocki