After a couple of hours trying to catch up with a boreal owl on the south side of Bog Lake (Lake County, BWCA) Saturday night, it finally stayed in one place long enough for Norma Malinowski and I to watch it singing from a large white spruce. A little while later we found it singing from a cavity in a dead aspen. If it’s successful in attracting a female, this could become a nesting cavity, although that’s not a given because males usually have multiple cavities in their home ranges where they alternate singing, anyone of which could become the nest tree. Unfortunately, the access to this bird is not easy. It requires hiking most of the way (~3/4 mile) into Bog Lake on the portage, and then up to a 1/2-mile cross-country hike east, depending upon where in its territory the bird is (hopefully) singing, through dense forest and difficult terrain. Neither of the other boreal owls heard last week were heard last night. I posted a recording of this bird to the MOU Audio page (http://moumn.org/cgi-bin/audio.pl), which hopefully will become functional before too long.
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