October 28, 2007 - Saw-Whets Welcome to the Nature Notebook. It’s tiny, bright-eyed, active on late October nights and makes strange tooting calls. If you guessed it to be Pennsylvania’s smallest owl, you are correct. On moonlit nights each autumn, Northern Saw-whet Owls are drifting through the night on silent wings. By day they roost in low foliage, but the “whitewash” under their conifer roosts is a sure clue to their presence. Standing only seven to eight inches tall, these tiny owls begin hunting at dusk for mice or sometimes insects or small birds. Saw-whet owls are migrating through Pennsylvania this time of year but the tiny, nocturnal raptors are rarely seen or heard. Just how far these migrating owls travel or where they spend the winter is still something of a mystery. To confuse matters even more, some saw-whet owls spend the winter right here in our conifer forests. This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.