I got a tip a couple years ago about a lady who had complained about being kept awake at night because the snipes were making too much racket.  But it had been too early in the season and I had a sneaky feeling it wasn’t snipes that were keeping her awake.

So, when I paid them a visit a couple weeks ago, I pulled out my I pod and speaker and asked if this is what she had heard.  “Oh yes”, that’s it she insisted.  “I could never forget that call.  And they’re back!  I have been hearing them again almost every night. ”

This was exciting news to me, because the call I had played was not the display flight of the common snipe.  Instead I had played the territorial call of the boreal owl.  She was quite surprised that it was a small owl she had been hearing.

Red-backed vole cached on broken stub.

So that evening I hung out in the thick woods near their log cabin in Slana Alaska.  The deep, dark woods, huge white spruce surrounding large, mostly dead poplars.  Several of the big, dead, decaying poplars had old northern flicker nesting cavities, potential nesting sites for the boreal owl.  A resident great horned owl hooted over and over.  On one short stump there was a dead red-backed vole.  An owl’s cache I thought.  I moved slowly through the woods looking over every lichen covered spruce and gently scratching and tapping below each cavity.  The sun had set and light was quickly dimming when I finally heard it, the loud repetitive call of the boreal owl.  I headed towards the sound scanning every tree.  But I could not find the little owl.  Not until it called again did I get a better fix on its location.  It was perched quite high in a spruce and paid me not the slightest notice.  the owl was probably a male.  The adult males generally establish a territory and call attempting to attract a female.

Northern flicker nesting holes are potential nesting sites for the small boreal owl.

Over the next week I visited the owl territory morning and evening, walking around trying to spot the tiny owl.  Just once was I able to spot the owl without being led to its location by its calling.  Its calling was sparse and sporadic making it very hard to see.  In the evening it did not call until near sunset.  It was mostly nocturnal.

Boreal owl with red backed vole.

One morning I had searched for over an hour before hearing its call.  The call seemed distance and muffled.  In a particularly thick patch of spruce stood an old poplar snag, I found a natural cavity bout twenty feet high.  Inside I could see brown feathers.  It was in the hole!   I tapped lightly on the side of the snag and got no response.  Only time will tell if it is successful in luring a female into its territory.