All three of our returned snowies have continued to move over the past week or so — one of them into a spot we would hardly have chosen for her. Out west, Stella and Columbia have continued to take remarkably similar paths out of Manitoba and across North Dakota. Stella, at last report on Dec. 9, was between the towns … Read More
An Owl on a Mission
One thing you can say about Dorval — this is an owl that doesn’t waste time. Dorval checked in Tuesday night with more than 10,000 GPS locations, stored up in her transmitter since late last March when she left the Montréal area and migrated north. We’ve had a chance to comb through her data, and it’s a fascinating look at … Read More
Attaboy, Otter!
This time of year, we can see some really dramatic changes — and that certainly has happened within the past week or so. We’ve gone from 15 owls in regular contact to just six, as most of the rest have apparently migrated out of cell range. Perhaps not surprisingly, two of the owls that wintered farthest north — Pettibone in … Read More
Losing Buckeye
We’ve seen some major migration to the north this past week, including one owl that is most of the way to James Bay — but the biggest news is the saddest, because we’ve lost one of our oldest and most interesting owls. You’ll recall my relief last week that, having survived a winter at Detroit Metro Airport (DTW), Buckeye was … Read More
The Pull of Spring
These have been strange and disquieting days for everyone, no less so for those of us with Project SNOWstorm. The global coronavirus pandemic has upended — well, pretty much everything. But even in hard times, owl research goes on. As of now, everyone on the SNOWstorm team is healthy; most are working from home, but some have unfortunately experienced layoffs … Read More
Zugunruhe to You, Too!
We’re just a few weeks away from the spring equinox, and as the sun creeps higher in the sky and days begin the lengthen dramatically in the northern latitudes, this is when we start to expect some restlessness to set in among our tagged owls. And that’s exactly what’s been happening the past couple of weeks. It’s not a rush … Read More