A Sudden, Tragic Loss

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We’re deeply saddened to note the death on Sunday of Bronwyn Dalziel, 24, an enthusiastic young bander working with our colleague Nigel Shaw in Ontario, as the result of a traffic accident while banding. Bronwyn started volunteering at the Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station when she was 16, and was currently a graduate student at the University of Toronto, … Read More

Casco’s Grand Tour

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Casco — our second Maine owl, tagged in late February — pulled a bit of a disappearing act earlier this month. After being captured at the Portland, Maine, airport, she was released Down East, in a complex of immense blueberry barrens in Washington County, ME, close to the Canadian border. Casco quickly moved a couple hundred miles north, crossing into … Read More

Wow!

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Thanks to everyone who responded so quickly and generously to our reminder that this year’s fundraising campaign is in its final days. In barely 36 hours we’ve reached more than 120 supporters, and an additional $4,000 in contributions — all of which will go directly into our research. One exceptionally generous supporter made a gift at the $3,000 level — and will … Read More

Can You Help With the Final Sprint?

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Four days — that’s what’s left in our 2016 Indiegogo campaign. So far, we’ve raised about a third of our admittedly ambitious goal of $25,000 — funds that underwrite almost all of what we do here, from deploying transmitters to conducting necropsies and toxicology work on snowy owls. We also pledged to help support the first year of work by … Read More

The Pull of the Pole

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There’s no longer any doubt that spring is pulling many of our tagged snowy owls back home toward the Arctic. In the past week we’ve seen several birds make flights north, while others have dropped off the grid, apparently having moved beyond cell range. For example, Hardscrabble and Tibbetts both left their wintering grounds on the northeast shore of Lake … Read More

Buckeye’s Bonanza

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One of the most exciting developments this winter was the unexpected reappearance on Feb. 22 of Buckeye, our first Ohio snowy owl, tagged last winter after being relocated from the Detroit airport. Her transmitter quickly uploaded a new configuration designed to maximize battery power and speed the download of her stored data — and that has worked spectacularly well. In … Read More

Wampum is Back!

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As readers of this blog know, we’ve had a very bad feeling about Wampum — an adult female that Norman Smith captured at Logan Airport in Boston just after Christmas, tagged and moved to Cape Cod. She quickly moved southwest, along the necklace of the Elizabeth Islands, winding up at tiny, remote Penikese Island, off Cuttyhunk in Buzzards Bay. She … Read More

Spring is in the Air

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If you live in the Northeast, you didn’t need much of a hint that spring is coming early this year — it was T-shirt weather across much of the region this week. Here in Pennsylvania, where I live, sheets of migrant tundra swans, Canada and snow geese were papering the skies the past few mornings, and spring peepers and wood … Read More

Merrimack Closes the Season

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This week, Norman Smith tagged our ninth new owl of the winter, and our 43rd overall — Merrimack, an adult female that was the 31st snowy owl Norman caught and relocated this winter from Logan Airport in Boston. Weighing a healthy 2,321g (5.1 pounds), Merrimack was named for the Merrimack River, in the tidal marshes at whose mouth she was … Read More

Buckeye’s Back!

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Here in the northern hemisphere, the days are getting noticeably longer — and that’s having an effect on birds of all sorts, including snowy owls. The past week or two we’ve started seeing some significant movement — not migration, and not necessarily northbound, but a sign of seasonal restlessness setting in. And with predictions for dramatically warmer weather across much … Read More