This third-year female was captured at Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW) by USDA Wildlife Services and relocated to northwestern Ohio. She was tagged by Mark Shieldcastle from Black Swamp Bird Observatory, and released Feb. 15, 2015, in farmland north of Oak Harbor, OH. Buckeye is part of Project SNOWstorm’s and Wildlife Services’s efforts to learn more about the most effective methods and distances to safely relocate owls from airports. She spent the summer of 2015 on the Boothia Peninsula of northern Nunavut, and the winter of 2015-16 around western Lake Erie. She was retrapped at DTW on Jan. 17, 2020, retagged and released again in northwestern Ohio, but soon returned to DTW, where despite repeated efforts to retrap her, she remained all winter. Buckeye migrated north in mid-March 2020, and died March 21, 2020, from unknown causes in a remote, heavily wooded area of southern Ontario north of Georgian Bay, where a provincial conservation officer confirmed her death and retrieved her transmitter.

Buckeye’s first transmitter was generously sponsored by Black Swamp Bird Observatory and the Kirtland Bird Club, while her second transmitter was underwritten by donations from the public.

2020 Map

2015-2019 Map


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