Same old, same old

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Not a lot to report — Oswegatchie has remained in the same general area southeast of the town of Fitzroy Harbour, Ontario, where he’s settled into a routine of hunting roadsides and railway tracks, as he’s done since stopping there three weeks ago. He’s part of a fast-dwindling cohort — a review of eBird records shows very few snowy owls … Read More

Spoke too soon

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Last week, when Oswegatchie failed to check in on Wednesday the 14th, we assumed it meant he had finally headed north — but we jumped the gun. The next day, Patricia and Daniel LaFortune — local SNOWstorm enthusiasts who had been keeping an eye on Oswegatchie — swung through that area and found him perched on a utility pole in … Read More

Seen…and gone?

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It looks as though our last snowy may have gone north. We had a report from Oswegatchie’s transmitter on Sunday evening, showing him still hunting the area around Fitzroy Harbour, Ontario the previous three days. But tonight, when he was due to check in again, there was nothing. The very warm weather in the East the past three days may … Read More

Chilling at Fitzroy Harbour

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The only owl we’re still in regular contact with is Oswegatchie, who has settled down to a new favorite spot in the Ottawa River valley of southeastern Ontario. Oswegatchie had passed through this area back in late April while moving west, then fetched up for a few days just east of Algonquin Provincial Park. The night of May 1 he … Read More

Oswegatchie, Kewaunee — and a Surprise from Hungerford

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The season is definitely winding down, and it seems as though several of the snowy owls that were near the edge of regular cell range may have passed beyond it, since only three checked in Thursday and Friday. Oswegatchie, who had been west of Ottawa, moved right to the edge of 7,600 square kilometer (2,900 square mile) Algonquin Provincial Park, … Read More

Ramsey, on the Brink?

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Ramsey, our Minnesota-tagged owl who spent the winter just outside the Twin Cities, definitely hears the call of the north. After missing a check-in on April 23, his transmitter phoned home on Saturday night — from Saskatchewan! In the previous six days he’d left Ramsey County, ND, flown across the southwestern corner of Manitoba the night of April 22-23 — … Read More

April 26 update

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The last transmission cycle seems to have been a quiet one; four owls checked in, and they pretty much stuck to where they’d been the last time they sent in data. Millcreek hadn’t checked in for more than a week, but he was just off the Buffalo waterfront, stubbornly clinging to what’s left of the ice of Lake Erie, which … Read More

From Ramsey, to Ramsey, by Ramsey

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  Shakespeare said a rose by any name would smell as sweet, but what about an owl by any name? We nicknamed our tagged owls for locations and geographic features — a better means keeping them straight than easily confused band numbers, without needlessly anthropomorphizing them with human names. And we weren’t always especially creative — which is why the … Read More

What’s Next?

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Not surprisingly, we’ve been getting one question more than any other the past few weeks — what happens to Project SNOWstorm once the owls are back on the breeding grounds? Of course, the transmitters will continue to do their job of recording GPS locations every 30 minutes around the clock, although we won’t get that data until the owl comes … Read More

Heading North

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The spell of mild weather that pushed through the upper Midwest and East over the weekend sparked some significant movement from our tagged owls. Erie made a 145-mile (233-km) trip up the diminishing ice on lower Lake Huron, having spent about a week at the inflow of the St. Clair River on the U.S./Canadian border. As of Monday evening he … Read More