Thursday, May 5, 2016

It's a Gray Area

It's nearing that time when the family takes its annual trek to south-central Oregon for a day of monitoring nesting Great Gray Owls (Strix nebulosa). We've done this every year since about 1993, banding young when there are some, catching adults occasionally. It started out as a research project investigating the demographic relationship between this population, the one to the south (in and around Yosemite), and others in the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon and in Idaho/Wyoming/Montana. That genetics study led (as I originally suspected) to the realization that these populations have been largely (if not completely) isolated from one another since the last ice age.

At any rate, in anticipation of this year's outing, here are two pics, the first of our son Nathan with an adult nearly as large as he was, and the second (from last year) of Nathan's daughter, Celly, with a nestling.