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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • VoL 123. No. 3. September 2011 
O Banding station 
with > 50 banding 
events 
FIG. 7B. Continued. 
al. 1997, Brittain et al. 2009), but this is the first 
study to quantify the directionality of fall 
migration in this species using large-scale recap¬ 
ture data. 
The results also reveal the frequency of 
northbound movement. Local studies emphasize 
northbound individuals when summarizing recap¬ 
ture infonnation (Holroyd and Woods 1975, Erd- 
man et al. 1997, Marks and Doremus 2000), and 
this may give the impression the overall migration 
direction is more random. However, northbound 
individuals comprise a small percentage of same- 
year recaptures (Fig. 5). Fall movements in non- 
southbound directions should be considered ex¬ 
ceptions to the general southward migration trend. 
The similar southward mean azimuths and narrow 
confidence intervals, regardless of minimum 
banding-to-recapture distance (Fig. 4B, C), sug¬ 
gests that most directional distribution biases due 
to encounters among proximate stations are 
overwhelmed by actual movement patterns. 
Hie unilorm directionality distribution of North¬ 
ern Saw-whet Owls in the Atlantic seaboard region 
may indicate that migration along the Atlantic 
seaboard is restricted by the coastline, and owls are 
following the coast rather than flying west into the 
Appalachian Mountains. The wider directional 
distribution of owls in the Appalachians suggest 
owls are moving somewhat more haphazardly in 
that region, possibly guided by the southwest 
orientation of the mountain range. This is congru¬ 
ent with observations in Alberta of Northern Saw- 
whet Owl movement guided by the Rocky 
Mountains and the boreal forest edge (Priestley et 
al. 2010). This less-uniform migration may be due 
to the extensive forest cover across the Appala¬ 
chian range, or due to owls searching for suitable 
wintering areas after reaching the winter range- 
