Owl hunting

You'll never guess what we did last night. :) My daughter, who is a wildlife major in college, had a trip planned to go watch them catch and tag Saw-Whet Owls. Of course she wanted my wife and I to go so we went down to southern IN and got there about 6:15 PM, got into a SUV and went back into Yellow Wood State Forest for a couple miles where they catch and tag them. We set up the nets and set up the machine that makes the sound of a male Saw-Whet Owl at two stations and then started waiting. We would check each station about every 30 minutes. We caught a total of 5 different owls and caught 2 of them twice. When we caught them the guy would tag them (if they didn't already have a tag), weight them, measure their wing span, measure their tail feathers, measure their beak, and look at the primary and secondary feathers on their wings as far as color (he said you could tell the age of the owl by the color of the feathers). About 2:30 AM we shut the stations down (rolled up the net so nothing would get caught in it) and left for home. By the time we shut down the stations and got every thing packed up and drove home it was about 4:00 AM. However, it was very enjoyable. I've always like to get out in the woods at night. My older brother and I used to go hunting at night when I was a kid and that was always a treat to me. There's just something special about being out under the stars at night when everything has gotten quiet and about the only thing you hear is the sounds of outdoor critters.

Note: The picture above is not mine. However, I do have some pictures on my camera that I will post later.