Hochelaga has been shifting from one side of the St. Lawrence River near Montréal to the other since returning this winter. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)
Apologies for the lack of an update for the past week or so. That was partly due to holiday and family travel, but also because it’s been, well, pretty slow.
Thus far we have just one tagged owl that’s sending us data, Hochelaga, who has been moving back and forth across the St. Lawrence River near Montréal since he surprised us by reappearing last month after 22 months on the lam. Whatever issues his transmitter might have had in the past, it’s connecting every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evening like clockwork, sending us updated GPS positions.
We’re also all but certain that Newton is back on his traditional territory in southwestern Ontario, where he’s been the past two winters. At least, an adult male with Newton’s flawlessly white plumage and a CTT transmitter has been there since at least Dec. 17, but it hasn’t sent any data. His arrival was part of an influx of adult snowies that showed up in that area the last weeks of December and just after New Years, joining the first-winter owls that had been there since earlier in the winter.
So, if this is Newton, why no data? There are two possibilities. One is that his transmitter is malfunctioning, which with high-tech gear exposed to the elements for several years is always a possibility. But it’s also possible that Newton stayed far enough north, late enough into the sunless Arctic winter, that his transmitter simply ran out of solar charge and went into hibernation mode. And with us now in the period of shortest days and lowest solar angle in the sky, it may take a while for the battery to climb back out of that recharge hole and get above about 3.69v, which is the operational cutoff. The persistently cloudy weather in southwestern Ontario has also meant that there hasn’t been a whole lot of sunshine.
Maybe, but we’re not taking a chance. Charlotte England and Malcolm Wilson, who first tagged Newton in January 2023, have made one attempt already to retrap him, with an eye toward replacing his transmitter. That’s tricky, though, because Newton is an experienced adult, not some naïve youngster. Malc and Charlotte report that Newton showed some interest in the trap and lure, but didn’t come in. However, they will be in the field over the next 10 days on their annual big trapping expedition, and will try for him again, as well as untagged adults that could receive a transmitter.
(On Sunday they did trap a large adult female, but she was already banded – and the rules are such that one bander can’t change the so-called status of a banded bird, by doing something like color-marking it or giving it a transmitter, without approval from the original bander. All they could ascertain at the time was that the owl had been banded two years earlier in Michigan, but they didn’t have the bander’s name or contact info.)
If they swap out Newton’s transmitter and it turns out that the old one is just low on juice, then we just send that used unit back to CTT for refurbishing and recycle it on another owl down the line. But we’d rather risk replacing a functional transmitter than perhaps have him carrying one that isn’t working.
Aside from those two owls, though, we’ve heard not a peep from the others we were tracking last winter. We know Jolene didn’t survive her migration north, but the others – Rimouski, Salvail, Carden, Atwood and Toronto – have been no-shows.
Salvail’s migration north in spring 2025, including her perhaps ill-chosen flight out into Hudson Bay. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)
Rimouski and Salvail were both first-winter owls trapped at the Montréal airport and held for rehab by Dr. Guy Fitzgérald before being tagged and relocated, and were among the first rehabilitated snowies we’ve tagged at Project SNOWstorm, a new effort to document how well rehabbed owls fare after release. We know Salvail made it far to the north, because we got a data dump from her in late May, showing her last position far out in Hudson Bay – but also that she went from strong, direct flight to a series of looping, curlicue positions suggesting either that she was riding on an ice floe, or had wound up in the water and was drifting with the wind and tide.
Was this the end for Salvail? On May 26 she went from strong, direct flight to drifting on wind and tide for two days. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)
Obviously, our hope was the former, but her continued absence this winter suggests it was the latter. It’s another example of something we’ve seen over the years, that spring migration is an unusually dangerous time of year for snowy owls of any age, but also that young birds of any species sometimes make bad decisions. Years of tracking data show that adult snowies tend to hug the coast, moving along land wherever possible or making at most relatively short flights over water. Salvail, who’d never made the trip before, launched herself more than 530 km (330 miles) out into Hudson Bay – and likely paid for that mistake with her life.
(We’re also frankly baffled that we got that final data transmission from her, since her last position was a long, long way from the nearest cell tower, which are obviously few and far between in the middle of Hudson Bay. That was another reason we were holding out some hope she’d show up this winter, that perhaps she’d made it to shore and connected from there, even though there was no movement data to suggest it.)
We’ve had winters in the past in which tagged owls didn’t make it south until well into January, so we’re still hopeful that some of our veterans will be back. But we also recognize that it’s a dangerous world out there, especially with the continuing spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza. In addition to Rimouski and Salvail, Toronto was also a rehabbed owl, having flown into a window on an apartment building; she also remained south unusually late in the season, perhaps suggesting some continuing health issues. And, as Hochelaga showed us recently (and as Otter has over the past several years) some winters snowies that have come south reliably in the past decide, for whatever reason, to stay north, sometimes for years.
That’s why we’re giving serious thought to switching from purely GSM-based transmitters we’ve always relied on to the newer version of CTT’s hybrid GSM-satellite device, similar to the one Otter carries, which would allow us to keep tabs on an owl wherever it is. The only downside is that we’d be paying satellite time fees year-round for each bird, which isn’t an expense we have with the cell-based transmitters. There are always trade-offs, but that seems like a reasonable one.
9 Comments on “Not a Lot to Report”
We are from Wisconsin, and travel the whole state. From here we also travel to Minnesota and Upper Michigan. It’s been rough the last 5-10 years. We have had such a lull in birds. Is there a reason for this?
We can speculate about causes, but understand these are just guesses. It’s good to remember that while snowy owl irruptions in the Great Lakes and Northeast average about every 3-5 years, those are averages — the real interval can be longer or shorter. Could be that we’re just in a natural lull. It’s also possible (I would say likely) that the multi-year pandemic of avian influenza has had some degree of population-level impact, given the number of dead snowies picked up the past few winters that tested positive for highly pathogenic avian flu. How large that impact is we can’t say, because there’s no way to assess the overall snowy owl population — the same owl may move thousands of kilometers from one nesting season to another, making an accurate census very hard, and they nest in places with relatively few to no humans, so just getting someone to try even a local count is daunting. (There has been cracker-barrel discussion of training machine-learning to distinguish nesting snowy owls from white rocks on high-resolution satellite images, but the technical challenges would be huge.)
I’m rather new checking in on updates but on Facebook there’s a lot of reports of Snowys in NJ.
South Jersey…do you report these? if so where?
Happy New Year, Robin v
We aren’t trying to track and report all snowy owls everywhere — eBird already does that job very well (although given the pressure on snowy owls from birders and photographers, a lot of them aren’t reported publicly on eBird until after the season when they’ve gone north — though as you say, Facebook and social media renders a lot of that caution moot).
Last week, I found a beautiful male snowy owl near Gridley, Illinois. A female was observed two weeks ago near Lexington, Illinois. She remains in the area, but the male apparently has left. I’ve been photographing the owls beginning in2019, and except, for 2023, I’ve been lucky to locate one or more every year since.
I’ve been locating Snowy Owls around Gridley, Illinois in either McClean or Livingston County. One week ago, in Livingston County, I located a handsome male Snowy Owl. It was in the area for at least days; I’ve not seen it since. A female has been located near Lexington, Illinois in McClean County over the last two weeks. I’ve found these owls every year in the area since 2019 except for 2023. Keep up the great work.
I have questions about the H5NI virus. Is it more prevalent in the winter months? It seems here in the Northeast, that is when you hear more about it. Also, in regards to the owls, do they contract it from eating waterfowl?
You’ve told us about the set up for trapping in the past, but what actually lures them to it in terms of food and is the trap monitored by some type of camera so the researchers are aware they are successful in a capture?
It’s hard to read about Salvail…..
OK, avian flu first…in the Northeast, in wild birds, it has been primarily a winter phenomenon, probably because that’s when you have large flocks of waterfowl (and yes, that’s likely where snowy owls and other large raptors like bald eagles are contracting it. In other places, like the U.S. Southeast, it’s been more of a year-round issue in species like black vultures.
As for trapping snowies, we’re working with birds that have several times the visual acuity of humans, so the trapping teams use live lure animals, most often small mammals like Russian hamsters, which are cold-hardy and look a lot like lemmings. At other times they may use a live pigeon, starling or house sparrow (never a native North American bird). And in all cases, the lure animal is caged in such a way as to make injury highly unlikely. We care as much about the lure animals we use as the owls we’re trapping. And in all cases, the banders are watching the traps in real time, nearby, ready to move the moment an owl is caught. The only time unmonitored traps are used are sometimes by airport biologists, a rig called a Swedish goshawk trap — but we do not employ such methods.
Yes, it was hard to see what apparently happened to Salvail. It reminds me of two owls we lost in March 2014, both young birds that risked attempting to fly over open water along the Massachusetts coast during a huge nor’easter storm with hurricane-force winds and immense waves. Both drowned, as did at least three other unbanded, untagged young owls that were also found drowned in the wake of the storm. I suspect older, more experienced adults would have found a sheltered spot and just ridden it out. Life inflicts hard lessons on young birds of any species.
Scott, thank you for your work and the time you take to answer our questions so thoroughly.
Folks, the annual birding trip to raise money for Project SNOWstorm’s work is underway!! Our group is in Minnesota this year and has already seen Long-eared owls and others – we will keep you posted on their search for Snowies as they head to the lake shore. 10% of the trip ticket cost goes to ProjectSNOW in your name! This is our 3rd annual trip to raise money for ProjectSNOWstorm. You can follow the fun on Destination: Wildlife’s Facebook page, Instagram, or contact Roberta at Rkravette@signpostpublishing.com to find out how to join next year’s adventure.