New York, the Saw-Whet Owls Are Upon Us. Obey Them or Risk Their Wrath.
The Northern Saw-whet owl is, objectively speaking, a real cutie. At its peak size, this owl comes in at around eight inches long and only five ounces, around the same size as a robin.
They're not normally found in the New York/New Jersey area, which is why a current rash of sightings this season has excited birders in our region.
#birdcp, This is the Northern Saw-whet Owl that was in "warbler rock" (Ramble, Central Park) today. We have had three Northern Saw-whet Owls this week in the park! pic.twitter.com/In50DnwzKl
— Felipe Pimentel (@Fpimentel14) November 30, 2018
But we wanted to know: is social media amplifying the presence of saw-whet owls in our area, or are there really more of them this year?
Gabriel Willow, a naturalist and educator with New York City Audubon, says it's not just in our heads (and Twitter feeds). We're experiencing what's called an "irruption" of owls, which is a mass shift in migration patterns usually due to a lack of food up north.
"Irruptive species are kind of exciting because it only happens every couple of years," explained Willow. "It's unpredictable."
And Willow says it's not just saw-whets; we're also seeing an irruption of different types of finches this season, like purple finches, Pine Siskins and evening grosbeaks, which haven't been seen in our area in large numbers since 2012.
Willow's educated guess is that seed crops in the boreal forests of Canada must have been low this year, which forced seed-eating birds like the finches to travel to our area in search of food and rodent-eating owls like the saw-whets to change migration paths in search of...seed-eating rodents.
And what better place for a rodent-eater to end up than New York City?
"For an owl, it's a pretty good place to be,"Â admitted Willow.
Another way of gauging whether a species is irrupting is to check with the Wild Bird Fund, a non-profit on the Upper West Side that takes care of injured birds. Director Rita McMahon said just this week, they received their sixth injured saw-whet of this season, an unusually high number considering the last time they received one of these owls was in 2014.
"These are all window-strike victims,"Â said McMahon, explaining that most bird injuries are crash-related. "It's rough on them when they come through New York. It's their ancient flyway but they're running into an obstacle course and it's hard."
The Wild Bird Fund has evaluated all six saw-whets and sent them to The Raptor Trust in New Jersey for further medical care and recovery. Those that recover will be released back into the wild with tracking bands. If any of them don't recover fully, they'll be sent to a rehab center as an educational bird.
"They adjust well to being ambassadors of wildlife," said McMahon.
Just a note: in the United States it's illegal to keep an owl or any other native bird as a pet. (McMahon says several people who've brought in injured owls have been disappointed to learn this.)
McMahon offered another theory for why we're seeing so many saw-whets this season: about five years ago, saw-whets who were migrating south from Canada and who usually take an inland route were pushed toward the coastlines due to an off-putting cold front. Perhaps something similar happened this year.
If you come across one of these tiny owls in the wild, a few reminders from Willow: be quiet, don't disturb them, let them sleep if it's daytime, and please don't use flash photography.
"There’s actually a longstanding tradition among birdwatchers that they don’t share the location of owls widely, because of concerns about disturbance," said Willow. "And now Twitter and other platforms are changing that. It remains to be seen what the impact will be on owls."
Willow offered an offline tip for finding saw-whets: follow the alarm calls of other birds like blue jays. When small birds come across a sleeping predator owl during the day, they tend to freak out. If you keep your eyes and ears out for these instances, you might find yourself in the quiet, undisturbed presence of a sleeping saw-whet.
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