It’s always a little thrill when the cell phone vibrates and the text messages start coming in: “CTT Data Update: Unit #27236551 (Salisbury 4Y Male) has checked in.” And then another, and another, until we have the weekly report from our far-flung tribe. The three amigos (well, two amigos and an amiga) were back together on Amherst Island this past … Read More
Weekend Update: Jan. 30
It was a pretty quiet week for our tagged owls — though one of them was courting danger, briefly back at an airport we’d really hoped he would avoid. We’ll start with Flanders, who remained on the north shore of Lake Ontario, having ambled back southeast of Napanee, Ontario, to the farmland around Hawley, just a few kilometers from the lakeshore. After … Read More
Three’s a Crowd?
Most winters, Amherst Island is one of the best places to find snowy owls, and that’s certainly the case this year — especially if you’re looking for a snowy owl with a Project SNOWstorm transmitter. Two of our owls, Flanders and Baltimore, have been on Amherst for the past month or so. And although Flanders moved off the island last … Read More
Weekend Wrap-up
While we’re excited about our newest tagged snowy, Brunswick, up in Maine, we’re keeping tabs on our other active transmitters this winter — and we had an intriguing blip from an owl we’ve not heard from since last winter. In Lake Ontario, Baltimore and Flanders continue to hunt on and around Amherst Island. A week or more ago, we pushed … Read More
Island Owls
All three of the snowies we’re actively tracking so far this winter are on islands — and one of them has gone about as far as she can in her particular archipelago. Flanders and Baltimore remain, as they have been for several weeks, on Amherst Island in eastern Lake Ontario. Baltimore’s transmitter is still sending up backlogged data from his … Read More
Baltimore Returns
It’s hard to imagine that by this date two years ago I had just banded my first two snowy owls. Little did I realize I would have the opportunity to band several more, some of which were released with transmitters to allow us some insight into their activities. It was really exciting when several of the owls I tagged in … Read More
All Kinds of Shaking Going On
Spring is really working on our tagged owls — even if 35 square miles of ice, up to eight feet thick, doesn’t sound much like spring to you. Up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where the snow is still waist-deep in places, Chippewa has finally budged from her winter-long home territory, where she’s been burning a hole in the … Read More