Post Archive by Month

Photographer Rick Bowes dropped us a line yesterday with a couple photos of Duxbury, the immature female that Norman Smith relocated Jan. 29 from Logan Airport in Boston to Duxbury Beach, about 30 miles to the south. “After seeing from your data that she was briefly on Duxbury Beach between the bridge and the pavilion building at the same time … Read More

I was going to draw some sappy Valentine metaphor tonight, but the fact is, we feel like kids at Christmas every time the transmitters check in — and tonight in particular. I was relieved to see that Amishtown is staying put in Lancaster County, at least for the moment. He’s wandered around a three-mile-by-three-mile area, but this evening was back … Read More

One of the best — and worst — places for snowy owls this winter has been airports. The owls love them probably because they so closely resemble the flat, treeless terrain of the Arctic, but they’re obviously dangerous places, both for the owls and for the planes (and their passengers) that might hit them. We found that out last month, … Read More

I was really excited to be in charge of trapping snowy owls in Delaware. I needed to place two transmitters sponsored by the Delmarva Ornithological Society, but I just wasn’t having any luck. Several trips, zillions of miles on the car, hundreds of dollars in gas. I visited many places where owls were reliably spotted for days on end to … Read More

Last night eight of our tagged owls checked in. Despite being tired from five fruitless hours trying to catch a snowy owl here in Pennsylvania that we want to tag, I sat up for many hours more going through the latest movement data from our growing cohort of transmittered snowies. The big news is that we added two more owls … Read More

We’ve been waiting to hear from Erie, one of our tagged birds in northwestern Pennsylvania, but I suspect he’s in a place with poor cell reception — the middle of Lake Erie somewhere. Erie’s been especially fun to follow because he’s already made several long voyages, so to speak, on wind-drifted ice sheets on the lake. Last month he spent … Read More

One of the unexpected surprises for the SNOWstorm team is who has turned out to be our strongest promoters. Carl Wagner is a 9-year-old third grader from Honey Brook, PA. He discovered Operation SNOWstorm with his mom and 2 older brothers. They all got very excited when they learned that Philly’s release site was within 3 miles of their home and … Read More