All good things must come to an end, and we may be at the finale of the 2017-18 winter season. This past week only a single snowy owl checked in, and it’s been anywhere from eight to 10 days since we’ve heard from any of the others of this winter’s crew. The one communicative bird was Island Beach, one of … Read More
A New ‘Jersey Boy’
It was a hard blow last month when we lost Higbee to a vehicle collision during an epic snowstorm on the New Jersey coast. He was one of the three “Jersey Boys,” a trio of immature male snowies tagged this winter by Mike Lanzone, Trish Miller and David La Puma. The fact that Higbee’s transmitter had been underwritten by the … Read More
Welcoming (Back) Ashtabula
In the wake of Higbee‘s loss, we have some exciting news in this update — great data from our new owls in Wisconsin, evidence that Chickatawbut probably nested last summer in the subarctic, and the unexpected return of Ashtabula. Wait — Ashta-who? If you’re scratching your head and wondering why you can’t recall that particular owl, don’t worry. This is … Read More
Losing Higbee
For the second time this winter, we’ve lost a tagged owl — Higbee, one of the three juvenile males we’ve come to think of as the “Jersey Boys.” And while the immediate cause was a vehicle collision, it occurred during an historically big coastal storm that we initially believed all three owls had survived. We became aware that something was … Read More
West is Best
Just a quick follow-up on my post about the huge Eastern storm and its potential impact on snowy owls. I heard from our friend, photographer and self-described beach bum “Northside Jim” Verhagen, who blogs about the birdlife along the Holgate unit of Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge on the New Jersey coast — and who corrected me about the way the … Read More
Higbee on the Beach
When it snows, it really snows. Just a few weeks ago we were lamenting how, despite having had a number of our owls pass through New Jersey on their travels, we’d never been able to tag one in the Garden State. Then we hit a double header last week with Island Beach and Lenape, which were both tagged the same … Read More