As we wrap up 2019 today, we have a new owl to introduce, and an update on the rest of the gang. New to the crew is Coteau, a third-year female that Matt Solensky captured Dec. 22 near Pearl Lake in western Stutsman County, North Dakota — almost the same spot where Matt tagged Pearl back in November, in fact. … Read More
Yul the River-rider
Rebecca McCabe was worried. Becca — who is working on her Ph.D. at McGill University analyzing our huge trove of snowy owl movement data, and who has also become a key member of the SNOWstorm field team — was concerned that Yul had missed several check-in times in recent weeks. Yul, as you may recall, was trapped at the Montréal … Read More
Well, Well, Well — Wells is Back
It’s been a busy week at Project SNOWstorm, with a shuffling of the deck among our tagged owls, some closure on an early loss, and the return of very familiar name. First, though, I want to acknowledge what many of you have noticed — we still don’t have maps posted for our four newest owls. That’s because of a systems … Read More
Otter’s Excellent Summer
Ever since we started Project SNOWstorm in December 2013, we’ve relied on an exceedingly cool piece of technology — the GPS/GSM transmitters made by Cellular Tracking Technology. As longtime SNOWstorm fans will know, these devices log locations from the GPS satellite system, but transmit those data to us via the GSM cell network. That means that while the snowy owls … Read More
Early May Update
Things are popping, as spring migration rolls along. Only two of our remaining owls — Pickford, up on Prince Edward Island, and Seneca on the (very rapidly) diminishing ice along the northeast shore of Lake Erie — have been stationary this past week. Wells continued moving north through southern Quebec, and on April 29 was just south of Lac Saint-Jean, … Read More
On the Road
The season is winding down, and fewer of our 2018-19 owls are still in regular contact. Most of those that remain look as though they’re pushing north as well. Plainfield — who has already made a more than 1,280-mile (2000-km) loop from where she was tagged in Wisconsin, up into southwestern Ontario, then south and west through Minnesota — checked … Read More
A Year in the Life of Chickatawbut
Snowy owls never fail to surprise us, but we really got a shocker this week when Chickatawbut phoned home — almost exactly a year since the last time we’d heard from this particular female. SNOWstorm co-founder Norman Smith, from Massachusetts Audubon, captured her as a juvenile in March 2017 at Boston’s Logan Airport, tagged her and released her at Salisbury … Read More
Stella!
First off, an apology — the past couple of weeks have been unusually hectic for members of the SNOWstorm team. Mike Lanzone and Trish Miller were in Israel for the Champions of the Flyway birding competition (which raised money this year for African vulture conservation). Steve Huy and his wife had a baby; I moved from Pennsylvania to New England. … Read More
On the Move
Regardless of what the weather’s been like in your neck of the woods, our tagged snowy owls know that spring is here — and this past week, a bunch of them started responding to the season. In our last post we discussed some hints of the season, including Hardscrabble’s sudden departure from his traditional winter territory in southern Ontario (and … Read More
Chasing Hardscrabble
Hardscrabble has been one of our most interesting owls, a male that was at least four years old when he was tagged on Cape Vincent, NY, in February 2016. The past three winters he has returned, quite reliably, to the Ottawa River valley near Arnprior, Ontario. But while his transmitter keeps faithfully sending us regular transmissions, a fault in its … Read More
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