Loren’s movements from April 6 to Dec. 22, 2024.(©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Not one but two alumni owls have come back onto the grid in the past two weeks, with a summer’s worth of wandering — and in one case, an awful lot of wandering — in the memory banks of their transmitters.

Loren, tagged and marked with a smudge of green dye so she could be easily identified at a distance, was tagged in February 2024. (©Guy Fitzgerald)

On Dec. 13 we heard from Loren, who was trapped last January at the Montréal-Trudeau International Airport by the folks at Falcon Environmental. Because she was fairly thin, Loren enjoyed some TLC courtesy of our colleague Dr. Guy Fitzgérald and his team at Union Québécoise de Réhabilitation des Oiseaux de Proie (UQROP), the main raptor rehabilitation facility in that part of Québec. After two weeks of plentiful food and rest, she was fitted with a transmitter and relocated 75 km (45 miles) away from the airport, where she remained for the rest of the winter.

The last we heard from Loren was April 6, when she started heading north beyond the cell network. When she hit the grid again this month she was on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, about 440 km (273 miles) downriver from Montréal, opposite Tadoussac, QC, a world-famous bird migration hotspot. Her transmitter voltage was depleted, and it was more than a week before she reconnected Dec. 22, by which time she’d moved 263 km (164 miles) upriver, closer to Montréal, near Pointe-Platon still on the south shore (or on the icy river itself).

Also on Dec. 22 we had an early holiday gift when Atwood checked in for the first time. This adult female was tagged this past February near Atwood, ON, by Charlotte England and Malcolm Wilson, and she was already back pretty much in the same neighborhood of Southern Ontario when she connected. We’ve found such winter site fidelity is not uncommon in adult snowies.

In both cases, the owls uploaded all of their movement data since the last time they were in cell range (April 1, for Atwood). Interestingly, spring migration took them in very different directions, perhaps because of their differing starting points, perhaps because snowy owls sometimes act like individualistic little pinballs, ricocheting in unexpected directions.

Loren’s movements from May through October 2024, including the area where she appears to have nested. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Loren headed pretty much due north last spring, and by early May was in the northern Ungava Peninsula, the northernmost part of Québec. She made a quick trip across Hudson Strait to the southern end of Baffin Island, but almost immediately reversed course and headed back to the Ungava mainland, where she spent most of the next two months in a very small area of just about 10 ha (25 acres), and even by July and August was rarely moving very far afield.

Given that Loren was only a year old this past summer, we wouldn’t have expected her to nest, although it’s assumed snowies can breed in their first year if conditions are right. And conditions apparently were right. It’s impossible to be absolutely certain from tracking data, but it sure looks as though she was settled down incubating and feeding chicks, because there’s no other plausible explanation for the density of GPS points in such a limited place, and for such an extended period. Loren appears to have been an early bloomer.

This looks a lot like a nest. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Once nesting season was over, she shook off her sedentary ways and started moving, roaming widely around the Ungava in September and October, heading south in late October. The early subarctic winter darkness caught up with her, and her transmitter went into hibernation a few times leaving gaps in her data, with just a few times when there was enough solar recharge to collect some GPS points. In mid- to late November she was just east of Hudson Bay; she went dark again, picking up Dec. 7-10 as she was moving south near Lake Mistassini, QC, and then crossing the St. Lawrence after dark Dec. 13.

Atwood was last heard from in Kapuskaming, ON, last April, after she’d moved most of the way north through the boreal forest north of Lake Huron. From there she flew up to the west shore of James Bay near Akimiski Island, then made a 950 km (590 mile) flight across frozen western Hudson Bay over the course of three days, with plenty of rest stops on the ice before making landfall in Nuvavut.

Atwood’s movements from April through December north of the Arctic Circle and back south. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Atwood, an after-third-year female (meaning she is at least four years old), was tagged in southern Ontario Feb. 25, 2024. (©Charlotte England)

From there, Atwood kept moving, flying straight north another 730 km (450 miles) to the neck of the Boothia Peninsula — from where she scribed one of the more unusual track paths we’ve seen, almost a giant lollipop drawn in GPS points across the Arctic. She hung a left, crossing King William Island, then curved south, then due east, then north again so that by late June she had flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles). Finally she backtracked and settled down, but clearly not with the same purpose that anchored Loren. Atwood spent July and August in an area of about 27 sq. km (10 sq. miles), without burning a hole in the map with piled-up GPS points that would indicate a nest.

Instead, it looks as though she was prospecting during that long, circular tour of northern Nunavut, searching for a mate and a place with abundant prey to feed chicks. One or the other (or both) were apparently missing. That’s not unusual for snowy owls, which have to gamble on where the next small mammal population boom is going to occur. It looks as though Loren got lucky, and Atwood didn’t. But these are relatively long-lived birds, so one missed season isn’t the end of the world.

This, on the other hand, is not a nest: Atwood’s much more expansive summer territory. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Atwood hung out in her summer territory until early September, then began moving again, remaining in the region through at least Nov. 8, when her transmitter’s battery succumbed to the darkness. It didn’t reawaken until almost a month later, Dec. 6, when she was in Wapusk National Park south of Churchill, Manitoba, on the west side of Hudson Bay. She had just reached James Bay Dec. 12 when it went dormant again until she reached Georgian Bay Dec. 21.

By coincidence, when she connected Dec. 22 she was only 18 km (11 miles) from Newton, who returned a few weeks earlier, both of them very close to their namesake towns in southern Ontario. Last winter there were issues with some birders and photographers getting too close, too often, to Atwood, and if we get reports of such behavior again this winter we’ll do as we did last year and remove the maps for her or any other owl we fear is in danger of being harassed. (As it is, all of our online maps are time-delayed by 24 hours for the owls’ security.)

Here’s wishing everyone a great holiday season, and sincere thanks from everyone at Project SNOWstorm for your ongoing interest and support.