Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!gatech!prism!vsserv!loligo!sandee
From: sandee@loligo (Daan Sandee)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Saw-whet Owls
Message-ID: <192@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 12 Sep 89 23:43:39 GMT
References: <1989Aug29.163529.6630@utzoo.uucp>
Sender: news@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Supercomputer Insitute, Florida State University
Lines: 40

In article <1989Aug29.163529.6630@utzoo.uucp> rising@utzoo.uucp (Jim Rising) writes:
>I confess that when I read your note on these birds from Ponca
>City, Ok., I thought that they couldn't possibly have been 
>Saw-whets in Ok.--but I'm wrong.  I did find a record from near
>Tulsa.  Unfortunately I don't have a Birds of Oklahoma handy.
>Could anyone fill me in on the species' status in OK?  

I checked DeSante and Pyle, who I regard as the standard reference on
bird distribution, and they list the Saw-whet in OK as 'xV,xW'.
These five characters translate to :
- It has been seen at least once and not more than 10 times in the last
  50 years in 'winter' which D&P define as between Jan 1 and some unknown
  end that depends on species and locality
- Separate from that, it has been seen one to ten times at a time not in 
  winter and not compatible with breeding either.
Reading between the lines, it means it was seen several times between Dec
and March.
I also checked on the other states' listings in D&P and it appears there is
some north-south movement. In winter, it withdraws generally from Canada,
and appears in states south of its breeding range - Kansas, for instance,
comes in as 'rV,rW' which translates to more than 10 times BOTH in winter
AND as a 'vagrant' - meaning at least 22 times in all.
I checked the annotated checklists I have for Washington, Oregon, N. Calif.,
Yellowstone, and Minnesota, and they agree with D&P (not surprisingly,
because they are the primary source of D&P anyway). However, both McCaskie
for N.Calif. and Janssen for Minnesota (and if you didn't know, these guys
are Big Names at this game) say that the bird's movements in winter are
poorly known.
This all comes down to that breeding records for the N.Saw-whet Owl in OK
are nonexistent - D&P do a careful job. So the original observer should 
report it.  I can supply the name of the American Birds regional editor 
- I don't have it handy.
Note that I can't claim to be an expert on either Saw-whets or OK birds.
This is just officiousness from some guy from Florida. My only Saw-whet
was in April of 1983 on the Cal coast near Santa Barbara - that's a story
in itself, that's too long to post on the net.

Daan Sandee
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
Florida State University, Tallahassee                 sandee@sun6.scri.fsu.edu