Most of our wintering birds learn quickly to avoid our netting areas if the nets are in use for several days. Therefore we have been putting nets up after dark, making one run early the next morning, then furling the nets and waiting a few days to use them again. On,the morning of November 10, we found we had fooled 23 birds which had flown into 3 nets. We had been discussing our not having caught a Screech Owl for a long time, so in the rush to get all the birds from the net, we took a small owl and hurriedly placed it in the gathering box without examining. We laughed about the coincidence of having caught a Screech Owl after saying what we had.