An all’s-well report on our cadre of snowies — as of the end of last week, everyone was just where he or she was expected to be. How long it remains that way, though, will be interesting to see. The days are getting longer, which may start nudging up hormone levels in our adult birds, making them restless with the … Read More
A Perch with an Historical View (and a Big Thank You!)
Some weeks are exciting, some weeks are more of the even-keel variety. This is one of the latter — but we do have a terrific milestone to note, with gratitude. Our five tagged owls have all settled into winter territories, including Wells, who initially had us worried that she’d hightail it back to the Portland (Maine) airport where she’d been caught. … Read More
Trying for Baltimore
Like parents, we try not to pick favorites — but over the years, Baltimore has become first among equals in the 45 snowy owls we’ve tagged. Banded in 2014 and given a transmitter in 2015, we’ve tracked Baltimore north and back over several years, generating the most detailed movement record for any snowy owl, anywhere. So we were thrilled on … Read More
CJAI’s New Mascot
Last winter, our tagged owl Baltimore spent a lot of time hanging out on the broadcast antenna of CJAI-FM on Amherst Island in Lake Ontario, which brags that it’s the smallest radio station in Canada. (Their antenna is on top of a dairy farm silo.) This year Baltimore’s spending the winter west of Ottawa, but he’s not forgotten on Amherst. When Janet … Read More
Buy an Owl Shirt, Help SNOWstorm
Michael Boardman at Coyote Graphics in Maine has made a habit of helping bird conservation through the sale of Coyote’s tee-shirt designs, and this winter he’s doing it again to help our efforts here at Project SNOWstorm. Through Feb. 21, if you purchase any of their owl-related shirts, Coyote Graphics will donate $5 per shirt to our work — so you can … Read More
Wandering Wells
In our last update, we mentioned that Wells — the newly relocated airport owl — was sticking close to her release site at Rachel Carson NWR in southern Maine…at least for the first day or so. That didn’t last long, however. She checked in Thursday night, and Wells lit out pretty quickly — possibly pushed out by an untagged snowy … Read More
Wells, Our Newest Maine Owl
As longtime SNOWstorm followers know, one benefit of our project is finding ways to help airport officials and federal wildlife agencies learn how snowy owls relate to airports. (Because airports look a little like the Arctic, at least to an owl — flat, open and treeless — they tend to be magnets for the birds.) Last year we cooperated with Maine Wildlife Services, … Read More
A Close Call, and a Tourist Owl
A few days after the new year had started, birders found a snowy owl in the rolling farmlands and woodlots of Bradford County in northeastern Pennsylvania, not far below the New York line. Because relatively few snowies show up in this area, the bird became a minor local celebrity, with half a dozen or more birders and photographers lined up … Read More
Oswego Joins the Crew
Sorry for the silence — I’ve been leading a birding tour out of the country the past week and a half, but things were hopping at Project SNOWstorm while I was off the grid. The big news is that we have our first newly tagged owl of 2017, caught by Tom McDonald on Jan. 19 at Oswego Harbor in upstate New … Read More
All Over the Map
There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes at Project SNOWstorm since the beginning of the year — though not always the working out the way we hoped or expected, which is often the way things go with wildlife. Here’s an update on what we’ve been up to. * * * * * We continue to track the movements of … Read More