This immature female was trapped at Martin State Airport near Baltimore, MD and relocated March 16, 2014, to the Monocacy River watershed by Dave Brinker and Steve Huy. This is was Project SNOWstorm’s 22nd, and final, owl to receive a transmitter during the 2013-14 season.

Monocacy immediately returned to inner-city Baltimore. Unlike our other owls, whose transmitters were programmed to collect a 3D GPS location every 30 minutes, Monocacy’s unit was collecting locations every 30 seconds as an experiment. Knowing this would eventually drain the battery, we sent the transmitter a command to switch back to 30 minutes, but it did not respond, and fell silent March 28, 2014.

On Feb. 7, 2015, Monocacy was trapped by airport personnel at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in Queens. After a brief stay at the Raptor Trust in Millington, NJ, to check a minor wing cut, she was given a new transmitter and released on the south shore of Long Island. Her old transmitter yielded incomplete data, but showed much of her route north to the northern Ungava Peninsula of Quebec, where remained through at least early July.

Thanks to support from hundreds of people, Project SNOWstorm put GPS transmitters on 22 snowy owls during the winter of 2013-14 to study their ecology and movements while on the wintering grounds. Our work is ongoing, but we remain funded entirely by contributions from individuals and birding groups. Your support will allows us to continue this important research on these beautiful birds. Please donate to this project to make it a success!


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