All three of the snowies we’re actively tracking so far this winter are on islands — and one of them has gone about as far as she can in her particular archipelago. Flanders and Baltimore remain, as they have been for several weeks, on Amherst Island in eastern Lake Ontario. Baltimore’s transmitter is still sending up backlogged data from his … Read More
Farewell to a Friend
Project SNOWstorm lost a good friend this autumn — someone without whom the project would never have gotten off the ground. R. James Macaleer, 81, of West Chester, Pa., passed away Oct. 29 after a fight with cancer that, for a while, we thought he was winning. Jim was a remarkable man — a Navy fighter pilot who, with two friends … Read More
Flanders Update
Some snowy owls are homebodies, some have wanderlust. After Tom McDonald tagged Flanders on Dec. 8 near Cape Vincent, New York, it looked like this adult female might be the latter, but since Dec. 12 she’s settled in on Amherst Island, Ontario — one of the more famous owl hotspots in the East. In recent weeks birders have been reporting … Read More
Baltimore Returns
It’s hard to imagine that by this date two years ago I had just banded my first two snowy owls. Little did I realize I would have the opportunity to band several more, some of which were released with transmitters to allow us some insight into their activities. It was really exciting when several of the owls I tagged in … Read More
Say Hello to Wampum!
Here’s a great way to ring out the old year and usher in 2016. The newest Project SNOWstorm owl is Wampum, an adult female captured at Logan Airport in Boston byJeff Turner, Logan’s wildlife biologist, and relocated by Norman to a safer spot on Cape Cod earlier this week — with one of CTT’s new third-generation GPS/GSM transmitters on her back. She’s … Read More
Season’s Greetings!
Project SNOWstorm is grateful for all the support over the past two seasons and we are looking forward to an exciting 3rd season! Check back in next month as we blog more about the Snowy Owl research that has led to the Project SNOWstorm collaboration, the researchers at the heart of those projects, and more about what we hope … Read More
On the Shoulders of Giants
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of periodic looks at the history of winter Snowy Owl research, and profiles of some of the long-standing researchers who are part of the Project SNOWstorm team. In this installment, Dave Brinker shares the story of Operation Snowy Owl in the 1960s. After two winters, Project SNOWstorm has accomplished a … Read More
A New Face, and an Old Friend
The 2015-16 season of Project SNOWstorm is off to an exciting start, with our first new owl of the winter — and the return of one of the very first snowies that we tagged two years ago. New bird first…on Dec. 8, SNOWstorm collaborator (and longtime snowy owl researcher) Tom McDonald of Rochester, NY, caught an adult female snowy on … Read More
A Big Year? The View from the Arctic
Again this summer, I was part of a crew heading up North to one of the primary snowy owl breeding grounds in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. There, from mid-May to late-August, a team of 25 to 40 people from all spheres of research (plant, mammal and bird biologists, field assistants as well as local Inuit) devoted themselves to studying every … Read More
A Quiet Winter? Hardly!
Welcome back to Project SNOWstorm. Our last update was back in early May, when only one of our tagged snowy owls was still far enough south to be in cell range. That bird, Chippewa, headed north around May 1, and since then all’s been quiet, as the snowies returned to the Arctic breeding grounds. We’ve been busy since then — … Read More