The Ozark Bird Conservancy is celebrating their first year of operation. The nonprofit research organization began as a way to better understand birds, their behavior and how our activities in northwest Arkansas affect their populations. You might remember a previous report from Ozarks at Large that covered a field research trip the group took to study saw-whet owls in Madison County. OBC Director Mitchell Pruitt stopped by the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio One to talk with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis about the past year and what the future holds for their research. He says this past year proved fruitful for learning about raptor migration and how they operate in urban environments.
Mitchell Pruitt: So we were able to fund several important projects for raptor conservation. And it’s been a good year.
Jack Travis: Nice. Can you tell me about some of those projects?
Pruitt: Sure. Yeah. So we have a migratory owl project studying migration dynamics in the northern saw-whet owl, which is a small species that breeds in the northern U.S. and southern Canada and spends winter here in the Ozarks. And we for two years have had funding to put transmitters on those owls to monitor their migration. And we’ve gotten some really cool return data from that.
Another one of our projects is studying how urban land use affects raptors, and our first focal species of that urban raptor project has been the eastern screech owl. And so we’ve gotten funding for two years of study in various different ways on them. And this is a growing project that’s become a collaborative effort among several folks across eastern North America, which is really cool.
Travis: Yeah, and we’ll talk more about that in just a second. But first, I’d like to talk about the northern saw-whet migration project. If our listeners remember from a previous report, you guys were using a really cool method and kind of an innovative method to track these owls’ migration. You’re putting on little backpacks, right?
Pruitt: Yeah.
Travis: And so what did you learn from their migration patterns?
Pruitt: Yeah. So these little backpacks are transmitters that are part of the Motus tracking network. And it’s an open source tracking system, and these transmitters that go on the owls in little backpacks ping specific towers that are set up across North America. And what we’ve learned so far, you know, these incredible little… So they’re the third smallest owl in North America, and they travel thousands of miles each year between breeding grounds and wintering grounds.
Travis: You can go to KUAF and look up my previous report with Mitchell. And you can see a picture of them. They are very cute.
Pruitt: They’re very cute. Yeah. And so what we’ve found sort of from our tag data so far, is that where we are here in the central U.S. funnels saw-whet owls from two different populations. We have some individuals that seem to be crossing the Great Plains and probably breed in western Canada, and some individuals that breed more in central and eastern Canada and are coming through the Great Lakes during migration.
Travis: Interesting. So how will that affect future research on the species?
Pruitt: Yeah. Well, this is a species that has not been well understood through time. So we’re just now really learning information about where they’re migrating from and where they’re migrating to. And so the dozen or so tags that we’ve been able to put out ourselves are part of a larger collaborative effort of researchers studying this species across North America. And so this is just a handful of tags among a larger data set from several hundred individuals. So this will be really valuable information in helping us understand where these birds are coming from and where they’re going.
Travis: Very cool. And let’s talk about the eastern screech owl project. Tell me just a little bit more about that and what’s next for it?
Pruitt: Sure. Yeah. So this is, you know, urbanization, for those who might not know, is one of the leading causes of biodiversity decline throughout the world. So as we grow and develop as humans, we’re having a major impact on ecosystems and the plants and animals that are there. But one thing that’s really beautiful about northwest Arkansas is that despite our growth, we still place a pretty high priority on green spaces. So green forests and grassland remnants and these protected areas, but still really relatively little is known about how these intact pieces of habitat among an urban landscape affect wildlife, which, you know, they’re obviously important for maintaining biodiversity, but it’s also important to understand how the wildlife are using them.
And so one thing that we wanted to do is study how eastern screech owls, which is a forest owl, are affected by urban land use. So this is a species that occurs in forest across eastern North America. They’re pretty abundant for the most part, and will even use forested habitats in suburban and urban areas. But here in northwest Arkansas, citizen science data from eBird over the last 15 years or so has suggested that the species has declined. So even though we have a pretty good matrix of green spaces and forest, protected forest patches in our metro area, the species has declined. And so we wanted to determine why.
So last year we surveyed a bunch of sites across the metro area to look at whether screech owls were there or not. And using that information, we can determine what features of those green spaces and what features of the forest habitat make those areas suitable or not suitable for screech owls to live. And so one of the ways that we did this was through surveys where we would go out and listen for screech owls. We also use GPS transmitters. So similar to what we did with the saw-whet owls, we’re putting little backpack transmitters on these screech owls to monitor their home range and what habitats they’re using.
So this is unlike the saw-whets, this is a resident species. So these screech owls are here. As long as the adults are alive they’re within a territory for life, more or less. So they maintain that territory.
And one of the things about urbanization and urban ecology, which is a growing field, is that we’re still really learning how these patches differ from rural equivalent habitats, so in a rural area, screech owls might be found in a really large contiguous patch of forest. But maybe they’re also in a small green space in urban areas. And what makes those green spaces suitable comparative to more natural, rural habitats is really important to understand so we can understand how these species persist.
Travis: Yeah. What did you learn?
Pruitt: So from year one we learned several things. We learned that screech owls are not in the metro area as much as they once were. They seem to prefer these patches of forest on the edge. So more rural forests, less affected by suburban and urban land use. And there are a few reasons for this that seem to be coming out of our research so far.
So one of these is that a lot of our urban forests are younger forests. These trees are younger, versus forests on the edge of the urban area or even further out into rural zones are older growth forests. So the trees are older and screech owls seem to like these older forests versus the younger forests of the green space. And screech owls also seemed to like areas with lower human disturbance.
One thing that comes with our metro area is a large number of barred owls, which are a species that has done really well in suburban and urban areas across eastern North America. They’re not quite as picky in their forest habitat choices as screech owls are, and they’re also predators of screech owls. And so the fact that we have a large number of barred owls in our metro area probably affects whether we have screech owls or not in some of these habitats.
We found that a lot of the sites where we had barred owls, we did not have screech owls, and this could be because the barred owls are directly predating screech owls. But because the forests are younger, it could also be that there are fewer cavities available for these screech owls to nest in.
Travis: So that’s something that with the older forests, there’s maybe more hollow trees or places for them to live.
Pruitt: Yeah, more hollow trees, more natural cavities for them to nest in and seek shelter from predators like barred owls.
Travis: Interesting. And so you also have a collaboration with other ornithologists across the country involving nest boxes. Can you tell me about that, please.
Pruitt: Yes. Sure. Yeah. So one of the things that has come out of this first year of data collection is the realization that maybe we can improve our green spaces and our forest habitats for screech owls by providing nest boxes. So screech owls are cavity nesters. They nest in holes in trees and they will readily take nest boxes as habitat.
So we are starting, now through 2026, we’re launching a nest box program where we hope to get 40 to 50 nest boxes out in a network in the northwest Arkansas metro area in the next six months to a year. And this is in collaboration with several other folks across eastern North America and out west. So we have collaborators in Fort Collins, Colorado, and in Richmond, Virginia, both that have nest box programs, and we’re modeling our program off of those.
And what I think is really cool about this, we really want this to be citizen science based. So we want to have partners, both from public land entities as well as private landowners, for these nest boxes. And our goal is to solicit nest box sponsors that can be citizen scientists for those nest boxes, and help us collect data on whether the nest boxes are occupied by screech owls or not from year to year, if they are, whether, you know, looking at things like survival in the adult, survival in the young, how many young they’re raising successfully, which can all be really important indicators of how suitable a habitat is for these species.
And we’ll be doing this in our current study area, which makes important comparisons from rural habitat through suburban and into urban habitats. So we can really dig in and understand the effect that human land use has on some of these species and how we can best allow them to persist through time.
Travis: Yeah. So you want to get landowners throughout this region to put nest boxes on their properties.
Pruitt: Mhm.
Travis: Okay. Cool.
Pruitt: We do. Yeah. So we’re looking for nest box sponsors. We’re looking for volunteers and nest box sponsors to help us really launch this program. And currently nest boxes can be sponsored for $150. That’s the sponsorship sort of donation.
And landowners who sponsor a nest box, you don’t even have to be in an urban area. You could be a rural landowner because we need rural sites as well for comparison. But, you know, by sponsoring a nest box, you would have the opportunity to participate with us as a citizen scientist in this program. So you would receive a nest box that we make for you, and you would receive, you know, a whole little booklet of information about how you can help us by being a citizen scientist and monitoring your nest box as part of this network.
So we really, one thing that we think is very important at OBC is transparency in science and public involvement in science and education. And so by having a nest box program that uses citizen scientists and involves citizen scientists, we hope to really sort of bridge the gap between research and the public and, you know, avian ecology and the public.
You can visit OzarkBirdConservancy.org to learn more about how you can support the eastern screech owl project and sponsor a nest box for your property.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
