This was supposed to be a long, chatty update about the status of all our tagged birds, the first in more than a week, with apologies for being behind with blog posts. Instead, we have to start with some somber news: we lost Harwood last week. He’s the Billboard Owl, the second-winter male that’s been hugging the margins of I-29 … Read More
Plainfield Joins the Flock
While Coddington continues to recuperate from is close encounter of the manure kind, we have a new owl in central Wisconsin — Plainfield, an adult female relocated from an airport for her safety, and tagged by Gene Jacobs and released on the Buena Vista grasslands, where she’s been ever since. In fact, Plainfield is occupying almost exactly the same territory … Read More
Owl Conservation? There’s an App for That.
We’re always pleased when someone recognizes what we’ve been able to accomplish, working on a shoestring budget, for snowy owl research and conservation — which is why we’re grateful to Connectify. This Philadelphia-based company created the first software-only wifi hotspot, and since then has launched a number of other apps to smooth or speed online use. They also have a policy … Read More
Low on Luck on Amherst
There’s been a lot going on, and the fates have not always been with us. That’s the way wildlife work goes, sometimes — you take the bad with the good. For example, one of our major goals this winter was to deploy up to five transmitters on snowy owls on Amherst Island, to continue our multi-year look at how the … Read More
SNOWstorm receives American Birding Expo Grant
Everyone at Project SNOWstorm was pleased to learn today that we are a recipient of the new American Birding Expo Conservation Fund Grants, to help us continue our snowy owl research and conservation. The grant program, administered by Bird Watcher’s Digest magazine, received more than 100 applicants, of which just seven were selected. We’re honored and grateful for the support, … Read More
Otter, the Hybrid Owl
Working with snowy owls is rarely easy, but earlier this month Tom McDonald had a run of buzzard’s luck — including a trip to the ER — that would have stopped most people. It didn’t stop Tom, though, and as a result, we have our first-ever owl tagged with an exciting new generation of transmitter — one that will allow … Read More
Say Hello to Argus
Harwood has some company. Last weekend, the ever-busy Matt Solensky was able to tag another adult male snowy north of Fargo, ND, in almost the same spot where he’d caught Harwood the weekend before. On Friday, Jan. 19, Matt got a call from Dan Mason, one of the Fargo-area birders who have been so helpful in finding snowy owls. Dan … Read More
A Tough (and Smelly) Break
Over the years, we’ve seen snowy owls — both our tagged birds and unmarked owls — get into a variety of problems. We’ve had tagged owls killed by collisions with vehicles and planes, electrocuted on poorly designed power lines or die from flying into them, drowned by nor’easter storms on the coast, or mangled by the powerful backwash of jet … Read More
Ice-riding Around PEI
A week or so ago we shared the news that Pickford had come zooming back into range, migrating southeast from James Bay, where she’d been since May, to northern New Brunswick. Well, she kept on moving, and her latest positions — sporadic, because her battery is still recharging from the drain it took to send almost 11,000 GPS points, and … Read More