Due to a glitch, this update scheduled for Tuesday April 4 didn’t post — sorry for the delay, and we’ll have a further update on the latest movements of the owls in another day or so. The Project SNOWstorm team ——————— It’s definitely spring, and robins and geese aren’t the only birds making serious tracks to the north. After … Read More
Chickatawbut Chows Down
One of the coolest aspects of Project SNOWstorm’s tracking has been documenting the extent to which some snowy owls hunt waterbirds over open water, a practice long recognized by snowy owl researchers like SNOWstorm co-founder Norman Smith, but rarely quantified in any way until now. Readers here will recall that earlier this month, Norman tagged Chickatawbut, a juvenile female owl … Read More
Weekly Update: Loop-d-loops
A fairly quiet report this week, although several of our birds continue to show signs of seasonal wanderlust, with several of them making looping rambles that wound up where they started. Running down the roster from east to west, Wells remains in southern Quebec along the St. Lawrence River. After spending much of last week near the town of Saint-Henri, … Read More
Getting Restless
We expect to see some restlessness as the spring days get longer — even after a major snowstorm, which much of the Northeast this past week. And we saw some of that behavior this time, along with transmissions from a couple of AWOL owls. After skipping a week, Dakota came back online after some sunshine on the Canadian prairies, and … Read More
Time to Head…South?
The past 10 days has been an interesting period, with some unexpected movements, some owls sticking close to their usual haunts, and a couple of absent snowies that may indicate that spring migration is really getting underway (or could just be low batteries). Favret, the adult female tagged in upstate New York by Tom McDonald, had initially moved north to … Read More