Category Archive

Last winter, Wisconsin was a hotspot for SNOWstorm activity, with four owls tagged in the Badger State. It’s been quieter on that front this winter, but not for a lack of trying — Wisconsin has experienced a very heavy irruption, and our colleague, noted raptor biologist Gene Jacobs, has been busy trying to trap and tag snowies. But because so many … Read More

We’ve had the return of Monocacy which was quite a pleasant surprise. I had really been hoping one of our Maryland owls would return and she did. Monocacy had originally been trapped at Martin State Airport and relocated to Western Maryland for her safety. But she was only half of the story. The day after Monocacy was trapped, last March, we … Read More

What a week! After struggling, frankly, for the past month — with repeated trapping trips to the New Jersey coast, Lake Erie and elsewhere, lots of close calls and frustrating near-misses — things finally came together in a big way this week. We shared the story of Monocacy’s surprising return, but there’s a further twist on that story involving another … Read More

I had just finished giving a talk in Delaware last weekend and was climbing in my car, listening to voice mails. Our friend and colleague Dr. Erica Miller, a volunteer veterinarian with Project SNOWstorm, was on the line, and I could instantly tell from the tone of her voice that something big was up. Erica had some electrifying news — … Read More

Patience is one of the things snowy owl tracking teaches you, and we’ve been patiently waiting to hear from Chaumont, the adult male owl that Tom McDonald tagged last month on the northeastern tip of Lake Ontario, near the New York village of the same name. We assumed from Chaumont’s long silence that he was out on lake ice, but … Read More

To our surprise and delight, another of last winter’s owls has reappeared — Braddock, banded and tagged by Tom McDonald near Braddock Bay, on the Lake Ontario shore of New York, on Jan. 25, 2014. Braddock spent last winter on and around Lake Ontario, moving between the lake ice and shore. In spring he began moving northwest across Lake Ontario … Read More

The owl we call Delaware has an interesting history and is unique in a couple of ways. I first trapped her in December 2013 on the Delaware coast, she was the first snowy owl ever banded in “the First State,” as Delaware proudly calls itself. A few days earlier, she apparently was feeding on the carcasses of a dead dolphin. … Read More

Michigan has its first SNOWstorm snowy owl, the result of a wide, collaborative network between researchers, a local college, several organizations, agencies and institutions in that state. And besides adding to our growing understanding of the winter ecology and movements in this species, this freshly tagged bird may help us understand how to better protect snowy owls at airports. “Alma” … Read More

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