We’ve been waiting to hear from Erie, one of our tagged birds in northwestern Pennsylvania, but I suspect he’s in a place with poor cell reception — the middle of Lake Erie somewhere. Erie’s been especially fun to follow because he’s already made several long voyages, so to speak, on wind-drifted ice sheets on the lake. Last month he spent … Read More
SNOWday Science: Are Snowy Owls Diurnal or Nocturnal?
Use the SNOWstorm Tracker to explore the travels of Snowy Owl “Assateague” for 24 hours along Reed’s Beach, Cape May, New Jersey and draw your own conclusion about whether “Assateague” is diurnal or nocturnal. Red arrows indicate daytime or diurnal movements. Blue arrows indicate nighttime or nocturnal movements. Backgrounder First some definitions. Nocturnal animals are active at night. Diurnal animals are active during … Read More
Meet Project SNOWstorm’s #1 fan!
One of the unexpected surprises for the SNOWstorm team is who has turned out to be our strongest promoters. Carl Wagner is a 9-year-old third grader from Honey Brook, PA. He discovered Operation SNOWstorm with his mom and 2 older brothers. They all got very excited when they learned that Philly’s release site was within 3 miles of their home and … Read More
Meet Ramsey
We’re continuing to add new tagged owls in new areas, and one of the latest is Ramsey, an immature male banded and tagged last weekend by Frank Nicoletti and David Alexander near the town of the same name, northwest of the Twin Cities. This is our first tagged snowy in Minnesota, which lies at is the western end of the … Read More
A tough loss
As soon as I heard Jenny Martin’s voice on the phone early this morning, I knew it wasn’t good news. Jenny is the USDA Wildlife Services technician at Philadelphia International Airport, and she’d just gotten word that the crew of a cargo plane had reported hitting a snowy owl at 7 a.m. today. The airport operations crew quickly recovered the … Read More
Updates!
Last evening was a big night — we received updated locations for four of our tagged owls. (Some are on a different check-in schedule, and some are probably having battery issues that prevented them from checking in). We wondered if the reason Erie had been offline for six days was poor recharge on his battery, but last night we found … Read More
Braddock and Cranberry
We wanted to share some photos of the tagging and release of our first two New York owls, Braddock and Cranberry, over the weekend, courtesy of Aaron Winters.
Freedom’s just another word for ‘owl’
On the evening of Jan. 25, Gene Jacobs and I were trapping near Appleton, Wisconsin. The wind was howling and temperature was only around 4F, with wind chill values down around -20F. We found a female owl huddled behind a snow bank, presumably to get out of the wind and blowing snow, and we looked for a spot to set … Read More
One, Two, Three, Four More
It’s been an incredibly productive weekend for SNOWstorm collaborators, and while I have to keep this update short, the big news is that we have four more tagged owls sending us data. In Wisconsin Saturday evening, Gene Jacobs and Mike Lanzone tagged an immature female near Appleton, a bird they nicknamed Freedom for the nearby town. We’ll have the … Read More
Return of the prodigal owl
Assateague’s back, and we couldn’t be happier. You’ll recall that he was the first snowy owl we tagged this winter, back on Dec. 17 on his namesake island in Maryland. He’s also been one of the most exciting to track, moving more than 150 miles in a couple of weeks around Delaware Bay and up the New Jersey … Read More