On this day five years ago, my phone rang not long after breakfast. It was my friend and colleague Dave Brinker, a biologist with Maryland’s Natural Heritage program. He was calling because of something we’d both been watching with growing interest and amazement — the almost unprecedented invasion of snowy owls coming south into eastern North America, which was playing … Read More
SNOWstorm’s Third Birthday
Three years ago this past weekend, Project SNOWstorm began in earnest. On Dec. 17, 2013, on the coast of Maryland, we tagged a young male snowy owl we called Assateague, named for the barrier island on which we trapped and released him. The small group of us who watched Assateague fly off into the darkness that night with our first … 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