Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 09:38:01 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "David F. Brinker" Organization: Project Owlnet Subject: Re: Screech-Owl morphs in Maryland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I just wanted to add my two cents on the Eastern Screech Owl color phase thread. I went through my banding records last night since we routinely record the color phase of screech owls that my subpermittees and I band. I also share Kyle and Steve's less than normal habit (but then who's normal?) of watching for road kills. This habit developed while I was in college as one of my sources of funds for school was putting up study skins for the museum, a great way to learn about other facets of ornithology. Between bandings and road kills I was quickly able to put together a list of 46 screech owls that I've encountered since I came to Maryland in 1985. I have a few others, but couldn't quickly put my hands on them. In the end, I had color phase notes on 38 screech owls. I've broken this down by physiographic province and here's the results. Allegheny Ridge & Coastal Plateau Valley Piedmont Plain Total Gray 6 0 0 11 17 Brown 2 2 0 0 4 Red 5 2 4* 6 17 Total 13 4 4 17 38 * All four were from a single brood in a nest box, not really valuable as representative of the Piedmont. Everyone can draw their own conclusions, but here are mine. Samples from the Ridge & Valley and Piedmont are grossly inadequate, those from the Coastal Plain and Allegheny Plateau marginal, but suggestive. If a test of statistical significance were run on this data set it would probably come out non significant. Overall it looks to me like the ratio across Maryland is 1:1. I won't speculate on this data set any further than that. To seriously address the question a much larger sample is necessary, on the order of 25-30 owls for each of the "cells" in the above table, i.e. 300-360 total! If there was a concerted effort by Osprey regulars to keep track of their observations in Maryland for a year or two and pool them all, a nice little note could be produced for distribution to the Osprey and publication in Maryland Birdlife. Any takers? I'd be willing to serve as screech owl central for this. To make the information collected standard I'd suggest a minimum of: Date, Location, enough that I could determine latitude and longitude coordinates, Color Phase, and Habitat, such as Loblolly Pine forest, oak-hickory forest, etc. So what ye all say? If you're interested just start e-mailing me reports with the above data and I'll save them all. If anyone has suggestions for additional data fields please pass them on to me, but I'm trying to keep this simple so that it is not burdensome. Best regards, Dave Brinker Project Owlnet Catonsville, MD 39 15 12 N Lat., 76 44 29 W Long. dbrinker@bellatlantic.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================