Flying Kittens

“Just hold her like this,” Kurt told me. So I carefully nestled my first two fingers into the soft, warm feathers around the neck of this tiny northern saw-whet owl, cradled her soft, warm torso in the palm of my hand, and secured her brown and white wings with my thumb and other fingers. My heart stopped for a moment, but under those soft, warm feathers I could feel her smaller heart racing.

Kurt opened the sliding door onto the deck of his cabin. I paused to snap a photo of her huge, yellow-ringed eyes staring back at me in the dim light. Then we walked out into the night. As we waited for all our eyes to adjust, I focused on the feel of this incredible being in my hand. So soft, so warm.

Mike Avara, another scientist who is recruiting volunteers for some exciting new owl research in Bayfield County, affectionally described saw-whet owls as flying kittens. Indeed, the feel of her took me back to childhood when my cousin Meggan let me, a member of a family with no pets, hold one of the several very new offspring of her barn cat. Even as a child, the experience provoked an intense sense of responsibility along with the joy of connection to another little life.

Kurt gave the go-ahead, and I opened my hand. There were a few sharp pokes of tiny talons on my palm as she took to the air, and we watched as her fluttering flight became silhouetted against the moonlit sky, then disappeared into the black of the nearby forest.

Regrouping, Kurt and I put on our jackets and headlamps to check the other set of mist nets. About the size of a volleyball net but so delicate as to be almost invisible, mist nets have been used for decades to capture small birds. Each June, our Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training Course experiences bird banding in the Moquah Barrens with Master Bander Jim Bryce. In daylight, his nets catch chestnut-sided warblers, brown thrashers, and clay-colored sparrows. Saw-whet owls are the smallest raptor east of the Mississippi—about the size of a robin and weighing just around 90 grams—and so the same nets work for them, too.

For many decades, northern saw-whet owls were caught only incidentally when nets were placed to catch other owls or nocturnal birds, and ornithologists thought that they were rare birds. Then someone decided to play a recording of the male’s song near the nets. Captures skyrocketed! We now know that saw-whets are fairly common across their range, although like most birds they have likely declined due to habitat loss over the past decades.

In the center of his three nets, which he deploys on dry nights from the last week of September through October, Kurt has a speaker set to play the owl’s loud toot-toot-toot call over and over. This sound is easily mistaken for the back-up-beep of heavy equipment, except that the owls are often calling at a time and place where no one would be working. The nets were empty on our second check, but earlier the speaker had blasted right at us as he worked to extract the little owl from the net.

This repeated call is the source of their name, since sharpening each tooth of a saw on a whetstone results in a repetitive sound. The owls make less well-known sounds, too. While exploring a series of recordings, I came across a vocalization nicknamed the “strangled cat whine.” I’ve heard this spooky sound numerous times in dark woods, and never known that it was just a flying kitten.

The owl in the net clacked her tiny beak in dismay at her predicament, but made no other sounds. Kurt is a Master Bander who has been banding birds since 2000, so with his experience it didn’t take long for the owl to be free of the net. Once inside his cabin, Kurt quickly prepared a leg band. Issued by the USGS Bird Banding Lab, the unique number stamped into the aluminum will allow this bird to be identified throughout her life and across the entire continent if she’s ever caught again. Unfortunately, federal funding for the banding lab’s important work is at risk of being cut.

Banding birds like this saw-whet owl has provided scientists with a wealth of information over the decades. Photo by Emily Stone.

Seven to eight percent of the 350 or so saw-whet owls Kurt has handled have already been banded, by him or someone else. These recaptures are an amazing source of information about the movements, ecology, and lifespan of the birds. Even if a bird isn’t recaptured, the measurements Kurt took of the owl’s weight, wing chord length, and age provide valuable data. This owl’s wing chord length of 136 mm, paired with a heavier weight, is what told us she was female. Male raptors tend to be smaller.

We also shone a UV light on the underside of her wing, where fresh feathers glowed hot pink. As feathers age, the UV-reactive pigment degrades, and older feathers look faded. This little owl was hatched just last spring and had only recently molted all her juvenile plumage into adult feathers, so they all glowed brightly.

Band-new feathers on this underside of the wings of this young saw-whet owl reflect lots of ultraviolet light. Photo by Emily Stone.

By this time next year she’ll have some bright and some faded feathers. Maybe Kurt will find her in his nets again. Maybe Mike Avara will discover that she’s raising chicks in one of his nest boxes. No matter what, her few minutes of discomfort at the banding station will help us understand more about her entire adorable species and what we can do to help them navigate a changing world.

Learn more about the volunteer opportunities with Mike and Kurt's saw-whet owl nest box and MOTUS tower research on the Museum's iVolunteer page: https://cablenhm.ivolunteer.com/saw-whet-owl-research

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 will be published in November 2025!

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.