Loren made one last (for the moment, at least) connection from southern Québec before going off the grid March 23. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

And just like that, spring has sprung. Last week’s milder weather seems to have triggered a bit of a mass exodus.

After showing very little of the pre-migratory restlessness we sometimes see in late winter, and for the most part remaining hunkered down on their winter territories, in the past 10 days we’ve seen the first big movements to the north, with three owls off the grid entirely.

In fact, as of Sunday, March 23, only two of our seven tagged owls were still where they’d been the previous week — Jolene on her little postage-stamp territory in southern Ontario, and Rimouski in southern Québec (as a rehabbed owl, we’re not sharing his map).

Loren started moving on March 20, leaving the area near Saint-Guillaume, QC, and ice-riding in the St. Lawrence for the next 24 hours or so before making a more determined and directed flight north and east, checking in Sunday evening, March 23, from Lac Jacques Cartier, in the 7,861-sq. km (3,035-sq. mile) Réserve faunique des Laurentides (Laurentides Wildlife Reserve). In all, she moved 238 km (150 miles) in two days. That evening was the last time she phoned in — by the time the next check-in rolled around two days later, she was off the grid.

Salvail made a big loop around Montréal — a prelude to migration? (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Salvail made a big, 207-km (129-mile) loop around the north of Montréal the night of March 24-25, ending up south of the St. Lawrence near Boucherville. It’s an area she’s visited before, but it was still a remarkably long flight in a short time, so she may be getting restless.

Atwood’s last call home was March 23, from the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Moving to southern Ontario, Newton, an adult male, and Atwood, an adult female, both of whom had been fairly sedentary for months, are gone. Newton last connected March 18 and was gone by the next scheduled check March 20, while Atwood bolted north overnight on March 21-22, and flew about 200 km (124 miles) north to the tip of the Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. She checked in March 23, but failed to appear on the 25th, suggesting she’s gone north as well.

Carden, a juvenile female who had wintered by (and sometimes on) Lake Simcoe, also made a big movement, but it was to the south and west, winding up near Harrison, ON, Sunday evening, a flight of about 150 km (94 miles).

Carden’s on the move, but not necessarily in the right direction. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

Unlike Loren, in her second winter, or Atwood and Newton, both of whom are experienced adults, Carden, Jolene, Salvail and Rimouski are all first-winter owls. We’ve seen over the years that adults almost always migrate earlier than young birds, so we’ll be curious to see if there’s a long lag, or if more mild weather will prompt them to move in the coming weeks. A lot depends on the thermometer and winds, with mild southerly air often signaling departure.

This is the time of the year when we need to remind everyone (especially those following SNOWstorm for the first time) that our GPS/GSM transmitters record GPS locations 24/7/365, but can only send us those data when they’re in cell signal range. Once the owls move out of the fairly dense cell network in southern Canada, we tend to lose them quickly, unless we get lucky and they stop near a community with a cell tower, or fetch up for a break along the Trans-Canada Highway, which provides some of the only open land (and consistent cell signal) in the middle of the boreal forest.

Otter decided to tough it out this winter very far north — in southern Baffin Island. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

The one exception to that rule is Otter, our so-called hybrid owl, an adult male whose transmitter also carries an Argos satellite system that is programmed to operate from March 1 to Sept. 30 each year. We know Otter’s 2019 3G GSM transmitter is now too outdated to communicate with the new 5G/LTE networks in use in most places, so we weren’t expecting to hear from him via cell signal this winter, but we hoped that when his Argos side clicked back on in early March for weekly updates he might be somewhere far enough south that we could try to retrap him and swap out his transmitter for a newer model.

No such luck. As he’s done several times in the past, it appears Otter has remained in the far north, having moved from the Melville Peninsula in the central Arctic, where he was in late September, across the Foxe Basin to southern Baffin Island, as of Monday, March 24. Last winter he came no farther south than the northern edge of James Bay, and in previous winters he’s remained in the Torngat Mountains of northern Labrador — though he’s also, in still other years, come south to southern Québec and Ontario. Otter shows how extraordinarily nomadic snowy owls can be, and as long as his Argos transmitter keeps working, we should be able to keep tabs on him for at least part of the year. He’s also a reminder of how just plain tough these birds are, to survive winter that far north. We know from work our colleague J.F. Therrien has done that some snowies migrate north come winter, and spend it on Arctic sea ice. (Unfortunately Otter’s Argos data doesn’t show up on his online map — another reason we were hoping to catch him and download several years of detailed GPS data. Ah, well.)

Stay tuned, and not only for departure updates. We have at least one more surprise for you this season.