Hi all, By nearly all reckoning, this has been an outstanding fall season for southward Northern Saw-whet Owl movements. There is a broad network of banders in the east that focus exclusively on capturing this diminutive owl, and I believe nearly all stations are reporting excellent numbers. Locally, the efforts of Kelly Sieg, Bill Bosstic, Bob Placier and numerous volunteers have captured and banded 15 of the micro-owls near Chillicothe, in spite of having few net-nights so far due to inclement weather. This is, so far, the best they have done by this time of year in their five or so years of efforts. I'm sure they'll tally many more yet. Saw-whets are very hard to spot, as they conceal themselves quite well in dense conifers, grapevine tangles and the like during the day. We've all probably walked right by one at some point. The numbers that are being caught and banded this fall, while impressive, must be but the tip of the owl iceberg. The vast majority go undetected and saw-whets are much more common than is generally thought. It might be worth your time to poke about a bit in dense vegetation this fall, and see if you can't spot one of these robin-sized owls. Cemeteries, like Green Lawn in Columbus, with their often plentiful ornamental conifers, are good places to look. Jim Jim McCormac Ohio Division of Wildlife 2045 Morse Rd., G-3 Columbus, Ohio 43229 614-265-6440 ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]