This photo of a Saw-whet owl was taken recently at a Kestrel Land Trust preserve in Belchertown, Massachusetts, near Amherst. Saw-whet owls sleep during most of the day and stay awake at night. They eat mice, insects, and other very small creatures. The owls are silent except during their springtime mating season.

"The Saw-whet owl banding endeavor was a serious effort, carefully conducted according to best practices, with the goal of delivering scientific data to the USGS Bird Banding Lab," Christine Volonte told the Valley Post. She is Land Steward at the Kestrel Land Trust in Amherst. She is holding the owl in the photo.

Volonte is a certified bird bander. She also studied Saw-whet owls in New Hampshire. She chose the forested conservation area in Belchertown as a promising site to net and release owls, and she wasn't disappointed: 14 different individuals are now recorded and tagged, contributing valuable data on this species to the archive managed by the federal government's Bird Banding Laboratory www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl.

The Kestrel Land Trust saves farmland, forestland, and wetlands in the Valley from being paved with McMansions, Wal-Mart parking lots, and other so-called "development."

To enlarge the photo, click on it, then scroll down and click "see full size image." photo by Kestrel Land Trust www.kestreltrust.org.