Dakota Makes 40

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It took a lot of long, cold hours, but Project SNOWstorm has its first tagged owl on the Great Plains — Dakota, captured this week by Dave Brinker and Matt Solensky in east-central North Dakota. She’s a landmark owl for us in several respects– the 40th we’ve tagged since we started in two winters ago. Dave will have the full story … Read More

Weekend Update: Jan. 30

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It was a pretty quiet week for our tagged owls — though one of them was courting danger, briefly back at an airport we’d really hoped he would avoid. We’ll start with Flanders, who remained on the north shore of Lake Ontario, having ambled back southeast of Napanee, Ontario, to the farmland around Hawley, just a few kilometers from the lakeshore. After … Read More

Help us Fund the Future of Project SNOWstorm

Drew WeberUpdates1 Comment

Project SNOWstorm’s community of supporters has been amazing over the first few years of our research on Snowy Owls, and we are calling on your help again! This effort has, from the very beginning, been entirely supported by donations from the public, for which we are deeply grateful. We have the opportunity this year to lay the groundwork for sustainable, continued … Read More

Brunswick Catches Some Rays

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It was beautifully sunny weather on Monday in Maine, and naturalist and blogger Josh Fecteau was birding around Wells Beach when he spotted Brunswick perched on the roof of a house, and got a couple of photos. We appreciate him sharing them with us. Back on Jan. 12 Brunswick was moved, for her safety, from Brunswick Executive Airport and released at Rachel … Read More

Tibbetts Joins the Crew

Scott WeidensaulUpdates2 Comments

Tom McDonald just got back from a long, hard trapping trip to upstate New York, which he said was “nothing short of grueling. The weather conditions were perfect but the God of trapping luck was not with me…until Tibbetts stepped into the bow trap.” Not that getting this adult male snowy was easy. Tom spent six hours over the course … Read More

Three’s a Crowd?

Scott WeidensaulUpdates1 Comment

Most winters, Amherst Island is one of the best places to find snowy owls, and that’s certainly the case this year — especially if you’re looking for a snowy owl with a Project SNOWstorm transmitter. Two of our owls, Flanders and Baltimore, have been on Amherst for the past month or so. And although Flanders moved off the island last … Read More

Salisbury Hits the Beach

Scott WeidensaulUpdates3 Comments

Our newest tagged owl is Salisbury, captured at Logan Airport in Boston by the indefatigable Norman Smith from Mass Audubon, tagged and released yesterday at Salisbury Beach State Reservation near Newburyport, Mass. It was the 17th snowy Norman has moved from the airport this winter, with the cooperation of Logan Airport Wildlife Services. Salisbury is an adult male with a history, which will … Read More

Weekend Wrap-up

Scott WeidensaulUpdates1 Comment

While we’re excited about our newest tagged snowy, Brunswick, up in Maine, we’re keeping tabs on our other active transmitters this winter — and we had an intriguing blip from an owl we’ve not heard from since last winter. In Lake Ontario, Baltimore and Flanders continue to hunt on and around Amherst Island. A week or more ago, we pushed … Read More

The Maine Event

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Last year was a heart-breaker in Maine. SNOWstorm had two enthusiastic partners in the Pine Tree State — the Biodiversity Research Institute, and the federal APHIS Wildlife Services staff, which was kept busy the past two years trapping and relocating snowies at Maine’s airports. BRI generously underwrote a GPS transmitter — and in the weird, frustrating way these things sometimes … Read More

Island Owls

Scott WeidensaulUpdates8 Comments

All three of the snowies we’re actively tracking so far this winter are on islands — and one of them has gone about as far as she can in her particular archipelago. Flanders and Baltimore remain, as they have been for several weeks, on Amherst Island in eastern Lake Ontario. Baltimore’s transmitter is still sending up backlogged data from his … Read More