Our third field season (2004) saw our total breeding pairs under study go up to 45--the largest ever single-year study of Barred Owl breeding ecology. Two more students picked up the ball from Eric and are studying our local owls. We radio tagged 11 young (two at rural nests and nine in the suburbs) as part of Jim Mason's thesis comparing the survivorship of our city birds to the pairs we are following in the country. Jim defended his M.Sc. thesis in November of 2004 (read the abstract). Patti Kelly followed our marked suburban birds in the non-breeding season. Her data will be used in future publications on differences in territory size across seasons and years. 

     2005 was a terrible year for Barred Owls. During the early part of the nesting season, when the adults had eggs or small young, Charlotte experienced rains of monsoonal proportions. Quite a few of our nests are in  "branch scars," where a branch has broken off a tree and a bit of rot creates a bowl-like depression. Many of these don't drain well, so the nest bowls flooded, drowning eggs or young.

     The weather was much more cooperative in 2006 and reproductive success was back to normal. This was our first year to install video cameras in nest boxes. Cori Cauble will be comparing the diets of suburban and rural owls using this technology for her M.Sc. thesis at UNC-Charlotte.

     2007 was our (humans and owls) best year ever. We had fewer pairs (35) under observation, but got more data from those birds. 22 of the 25 nests (88%) where we knew the outcome were successful. At least 36 young were fledged, and we banded 26 of these. We have radios on four young--two in the city and two in the country. As of 15 October all four birds are doing well. The city birds have settled down, both about 1.5 miles from their nest, while the country birds just started moving.

     We had video cams in 5 nests and are getting very interesting data on feeding habits.