We’ve had some interesting developments with our tagged owls, but at the national level, the biggest snowy owl news this past week has been the growing attention on a snowy that’s wintering in downtown Washington, D.C., and appearing most every night like clockwork at Union Station, within view of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to drawing crowds of birders, photographers … Read More
Late Yul-tide Greetings
The last gift of Yuletide came a little late this year for Project SNOWstorm. On Sunday evening, Jan. 9, we were surprised and delighted to see that Yul — an adult female originally captured at the Montréal airport in November 2019, and named for that airport’s international code, YUL — had just made a late return from the North. What’s … Read More
Hochelaga and Otter Return
It’s always exciting when a previously tagged owl returns south, carrying with it months’ — or even years’ — worth of backlogged data. We got two such returns in the past week or so, including a snowy owl we’ve been especially hoping to hear from. Hochelaga: The day after Christmas we were pleased to see Hochelaga check in for the … Read More
From Us to You, Thank You
Project SNOWstorm takes a unique approach to studying snowy owls. We are funded entirely by relatively small, tax-deductible contributions from the general public, without the large foundation, institutional or agency support typical of major research programs. Despite that, we have grown in just eight years into one of the largest studies of snowy owls anywhere in the world, and by … Read More
Columbia and Fond du Lac: An Update
While we’re excited about our two new Québec owls, Nicolet and Odanak, we’re also keeping a close eye on our returnees from past winters, especially two in the upper Midwest, Columbia and Fond du Lac. Columbia, you may recall, returned Nov. 25 and uploaded part of her migration data from last spring, then went dark while her battery recharged. Two … Read More
Two New Faces
While everyone’s been understandably focused on the holidays — including all of us at Project SNOWstorm — we’ve had some exciting new developments. The biggest news is the addition of two more Québec owls, moved in recent weeks from the Montréal-Trudeau airport to safer haunts across the St. Lawrence. Both are adult females, and one is, as they say, known … Read More
Snowy Owl Winter Mortality Investigations
Transmitters get the glory, but there is a less glamorous but equally important part of Project SNOWstorm — the work done by our veterinary team members since the snowy owl irruption in the winter of 2013-14, when SNOWstorm was founded. Since then, the veterinary team has conducted necropsies (post-mortem exams) and collected physical data on more than 300 owls salvaged … Read More
Congratulations, Dr. McCabe!
It is with both pride and pleasure that everyone here at Project SNOWstorm sends our warmest congratulations to our newly minted doctoral colleague , Dr. Rebecca McCabe. Last Friday Becca successfully defended her McGill University (Montréal) Ph.D. dissertation, a wide-ranging examination of the winter ecology of snowy owls. Becca’s work has already resulted in a number of published scientific papers … Read More
The Worst News, and Some Good News
I hate writing this kind of update; even after eight years it doesn’t get any easier to lose an owl, and I’m afraid we lost Aimé, our most recently tagged snowy, on Monday afternoon, Dec. 13. As we noted over the weekend, even though she’d been moved 80 km (50 miles) and across the wide St. Lawrence River, she quickly … Read More
Welcome, Aimé (and an Update from Fond du Lac)
Our first newly tagged snowy of the 2021-22 season has already demonstrated she’s a stubborn owl. Aimé — an adult female trapped at the Montréal-Trudeau Airport in Québec by Falcon Environmental, and tagged by Dr. Guy Fitzgérald at the University of Montréal, was relocated about 80 km (50 miles) across the St. Lawrence to farmland near the town of Saint-Aimé … Read More