Pettibone and Gichigami

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In keeping with our goal of tagging more owls in the prairies and western Great Lakes this winter, we’re pleased to introduce two newly tagged snowies — one in North Dakota, the other on Lake Superior. Pettibone is named for the nearby hamlet of the same name in Kidder County, ND — but it’s a fitting name for this almost … Read More

Through the North Woods

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We’ve seen some big movements within the past week, and only one tagged owl (that we know of) remains on its wintering grounds. That one is Oswego, who is still hanging out on little Bass Island in eastern Lake Ontario, with occasional side trips to the mainland and even tinier Gull Island — this last a state wildlife management area with nesting … Read More

On and Off the Grid

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More and more snowies are moving north, dropping out of cell range for the summer — but we were pleased to get a big data dump from Oswego, who had been AWOL for the past month. Oswego, you’ll recall, had slipped off our radar at the beginning of March, after her transmitter showed a curious lack of solar recharge. Unsure … Read More

Oh, Canada!

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  Due to a glitch, this update scheduled for Tuesday April 4 didn’t post — sorry for the delay, and we’ll have a further update on the latest movements of the owls in another day or so. The Project SNOWstorm team ——————— It’s definitely spring, and robins and geese aren’t the only birds making serious tracks to the north. After … Read More

Weekly Update: Loop-d-loops

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A fairly quiet report this week, although several of our birds continue to show signs of seasonal wanderlust, with several of them making looping rambles that wound up where they started. Running down the roster from east to west, Wells remains in southern Quebec along the St. Lawrence River. After spending much of last week near the town of Saint-Henri, … Read More

Getting Restless

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We expect to see some restlessness as the spring days get longer — even after a major snowstorm, which much of the Northeast this past week. And we saw some of that behavior this time, along with transmissions from a couple of AWOL owls. After skipping a week, Dakota came back online after some sunshine on the Canadian prairies, and … Read More

Time to Head…South?

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The past 10 days has been an interesting period, with some unexpected movements, some owls sticking close to their usual haunts, and a couple of absent snowies that may indicate that spring migration is really getting underway (or could just be low batteries). Favret, the adult female tagged in upstate New York by Tom McDonald, had initially moved north to … Read More

Holding Patterns

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It was a pretty quite week on the tracking front, with all of our owls — those still on winter territory, and those that have started to migrate — just biding their time. Out west, Dakota and Chase Lake remain on their respective territories in Saskatchewan and North Dakota. Oswego failed to check in again this week from her namesake … Read More

Catching Chase Lake

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It’s been a rather frustrating winter for Matt Solensky, our Project SNOWstorm colleague in North Dakota. His hope (and ours) — that he would be able to quickly trap and tag a couple of prairie-hunting snowy owls this winter — proved to be a little too optimistic. Deep and crusted snow kept the number of owls in eastern North Dakota … Read More