We’re pleased to announce the first newly tagged owl of the season — a heavily marked juvenile female we’ve nicknamed Alderbrooke, trapped and relocated from the Montréal airport. Trapped and relocated twice, in fact; much as with Dorval last year, Alderbrooke as proven to be a persistent boomerang. She was initially trapped Dec. 9 by Julie Lecours of Falcon Environmental, … Read More
An Early Gift: Simcoe’s Back!
Back on Nov. 1, we had tantalizing whisper from one of our 2019-20 class of snowy owls — Simcoe, an adult female we had tagged last February on Amherst Island in eastern Lake Ontario. The first of each month, all the transmitters are programmed to send a simple “I’m here!” message if they’re in cell range, even if the signal … Read More
A Quick Update
While we were excited to see Redwood come back last week, we were also closely monitoring our other three (so far this winter) returnee snowies — Stella, Columbia and Dorval. Stella had been off the grid for 10 days, last heard from in Richland County, North Dakota, way down in the southeastern corner of the state near the South Dakota … Read More
Redwood’s Return
There are few more exciting moments for us here at Project SNOWstorm than when an owl that’s been out of touch for months checks back in again. So we were pretty jazzed last week when the transmitter carried by Redwood — a dazzlingly all-white adult male snowy tagged last January in upstate New York — connected for the first time … Read More
Country Owls, City Owl
All three of our returned snowies have continued to move over the past week or so — one of them into a spot we would hardly have chosen for her. Out west, Stella and Columbia have continued to take remarkably similar paths out of Manitoba and across North Dakota. Stella, at last report on Dec. 9, was between the towns … Read More
An Owl on a Mission
One thing you can say about Dorval — this is an owl that doesn’t waste time. Dorval checked in Tuesday night with more than 10,000 GPS locations, stored up in her transmitter since late last March when she left the Montréal area and migrated north. We’ve had a chance to comb through her data, and it’s a fascinating look at … Read More
Dorval is Back!
I’ll have more details tomorrow, but a short while ago Dorval — an adult female moved from the Montréal airport last winter as part of our study into ways to keep relocated owls from returning to airfields — checked in after coming south from the Arctic. What’s more, it’s clear from her tracking data that she nested in the northern … Read More
Your Support Makes Our Work — All of It — Possible
Project SNOWstorm is underwritten entirely by donations, large and small, from the public, and is made possible by our team of researchers, banders and veterinarians who donate their time and expertise. Every dollar we raise goes into the field or the lab. We know this is a difficult year for many who follow our work at SNOWstorm. If you’re in … Read More
A New Season Amid Unusual Challenges
To our friends in the U.S., we hope you had a happy Thanksgiving this week, and here’s hoping everyone in the SNOWstorm community, everywhere, is remaining safe and healthy during this trying and difficult time. For all of us at Project SNOWstorm — and we suspect for many of you as well — the natural world has been a source … Read More
ISOWG – All in This Together
(Earlier this year, SNOWstorm team members David Brinker and Jean-François [J.F.] Therrien joined snowy owl research colleagues from around the world for a periodic meeting of the International Snowy Owl Working Group — which, by the time it ended, proved to be a bit more nerve-wracking than they expected. Here’s their report.) ————– Back in the day when international travel … Read More