19 Aug Nature’s Fanny Pack: ASU Deployments to Track an Owl
Conflict Between Owl Species
During our owl surveys we call for both Northern Spotted Owls and if known of Barred owl presence we call for Barred owls as well. The Barred owl species is invasive to the West coast, but native to the East coast of the United States. Their movement through the US is a probable cause of habitat fragmentation and this has led to a decrease in our native species of spotted owls as favorable habitat conditions make it easy to establish with bountiful woodrats and redwood trees to nest in.
Below is a video of a female NSO calling for her chick who can be heard crying to be fed!
Conservation Through Removal
In earlier blogs I have discussed the side of conservation that involves invasive species removal more on plants, but have not mentioned much removal of an animal. Some may think why not capture the animal and release it back to the East coast where it’s originally from? Some of these Barred owl pairs can be missed when removal occurs and there could be a possibility of them coming back. Barred owls are highly territorial and will often kill Northern Spotted owls; there have been instances of hybridization between the two species. So measures are taken in our field of conservation to humanely euthanize them to save our native threatened species.
This season we came across a pair of Barred owls early in the season and have been tracking them as they are in canyons neighboring our nesting pairs of Spotted owls. Attached below is a female Barred owl that flew in front of us when we played a Barred owl call during the day!
ASU Deployments and habitats
During our owl surveys each pair had its own beautiful site that we hiked into. A mix of bay and redwood trees would be their trees that they frequent on nesting in!
Apart from day/night call surveys we deploy ARU and now more recently ASU units. ARU units are acoustic monitoring devices that are out for weeks and ASU units are acoustic monitoring devices that send alerts in real time. This has become crucial in our efforts to track down the Barred owls in the park. Identifying detections same day saves biologists time and efforts knowing how tricky it has been to follow this quiet and stealthy pair.
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