Northern Saw-whet Owls Captured and Banded in Lamar County

The Northern Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus) is a small northern owl that primarily inhabits evergreen forests.Most of its breeding range is in Canada and the northern United States, with populations found farther south at high elevations (Robinson 1990, Cannings 1993, Nicholson 1997).The species nests in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina (Stupka 1946), although damage to the spruce-fir forest by the balsam wooly adelgid (Adelges piceae) has apparently reduced this population (Alsop 2001).Because Northern Saw-whet Owls are north-south migrants, individuals that nest in the southern Appalachians may migrate up and down slope with the seasons.Northern Saw-whet Owls display a cyclic irruptive pattern similar to some northern finches, possibly due to increased competition for mammalian prey resources (De Ruyck 2009).To illustrate, Brinker et al. (1997) found that owls caught during the irruption year of 1995 had lower than typical fat and mass.They are found wintering in larger numbers and farther south than usual approximately every 8 years.A concerted effort to document this species in Georgia during the irruption of 1999-2000 (Brittain 2009) located several birds in Rabun County (Beaton 2001).Winter 2007-2008 featured another irruption, as reported by banding stations across the United States, though only one bird was documented in Georgia.The winter range of the Northern Saw-whet Owl in Georgia is poorly understood, and likely underestimated, as it is rarely observed in the state.The Annotated Checklist of Georgia Birds (Beaton et al. 2003) mentions just 13 published records, all between October and March.It is a rare wintering bird along the coast and north of the Fall Line (Haney 1986), particularly in Rabun County (Chaffin 1995, Bell 2000, Beaton 2001, Bell 2002).There is also an undocumented report of a bird at Brasstown Bald in May 2000.In October 1982, Cliff Kevill found an injured owl in Cobb County (Brisse 1983).Gaining a better understanding of this very secretive bird is important, because it is one of the Georgia species predicted to be impacted significantly by climate change (Oberle 1987, Price 2001).

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