On Saturday, SNOWstorm collaborator Tom McDonald tagged the latest addition to the family — an adult male snowy owl he’s nicknamed Chaumont (pronounced “Shaa-moe”), for the small town at the extreme eastern end of Lake Ontario, just a few miles from the Canadian border, where he was captured. “He is at least a third-, if not a fourth-year male, and … Read More
SNOWstorm on NPR today
News flash: An interview we taped two weeks ago with the NPR news show “Here and Now” — which was bumped that day because of the Paris terror attacks — will be broadcast this afternoon, at 49 minutes into the second hour of the show. You can listen on your local NPR station, or stream the show on the “Here … Read More
SNOWstorm 2.0 on Indiegogo!
Last winter, Project SNOWstorm raised an incredible $36,000 on the crowd-funding website Indiegogo, which allowed us to launch our snowy owl research and pay for transmitters, lab work and much else. Today, we’re launching SNOWstorm 2.0 on Indiegogo, which will allow us to continue the work we’re doing this winter both in the field and in the laboratory. While we’ve … Read More
Update: Millcreek and Century
Millcreek was the first of last season’s owls to return to cell range in November, but we’ve been holding back on mapping his location recently because he was using a fairly small, rather accessible area near Toronto, and we wanted to give him some breathing space. But he’s been moving less predictably lately, and using a wider local area, so … Read More
Erie (the place) and Erie (the owl)
Snowy owls…they’ll break your heart, and take your breath away, sometimes all at once. Here’s the story of my attempts to tag a new owl near Erie, Pa. — and also the latest on Erie the owl, one we’ve been tracking since last winter. Sunday and Monday I was in Erie, trying to catch a snowy owl in Presque Isle State … Read More
Updates
A couple of quick updates on some of our tagged owls: –Delaware, the former rehab bird that was tagged Dec. 11 when she was released, checked in after missing a week (her transmitter is now on a seven-day cycle to conserve battery strength). Having wandered down to the southern end of Metompkin Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia the … Read More
BirdCast: Comparing Irruptions
One of the most common questions we’ve been getting lately is, How does this winter’s irruption compare with last year’s, or with previous winters? Fortunately, our colleague Andrew Farnsworth at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tackled just this question over at BirdCast, the CLO project that forecasts bird migration using radar and other information. Andrew and Benjamin Van Doren have used … Read More
Wanted: Dead or Alive
(Dr. Cindy Driscoll is the state fish and wildlife veterinarian for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources [DNR], and has served as the veterinary coordinator for Project SNOWstorm since our start last winter. Read how Cindy got involved through SNOWstorm cofounder Dave Brinker — and click here for a longer story and photos from the University of Pennsylvania about how Project … Read More
Century Makes Two
Let me start with an apology, for the gap in updates — I was out of the country last week, and the rest of the SNOWstorm team was scattered to the four winds as well. Which is a shame, because our second owl from last winter has popped up in cell range — Century, banded in Massachusetts in March by … Read More
Millcreek is Back!
Last week, my phone suddenly went nuts — Mike Lanzone and Andy McGann at CTT, who make the transmitters we use, and Dave Brinker in Maryland, were all trying to call at the same time, with the same fantastic news. Millcreek was back! This immature male snowy owl, which Mike and bander Tom McDonald had tagged last Jan. 20 in … Read More