It seems almost everyone got the same message. After months of barely moving, even Emblème and Fulgence, both youngsters who are usually the last to migrate north, lit out this past week. Perth had already shifted up to Georgian Bay, and by March 28, Atwood was following suit, so that by April 5 she was on what ice remained between … Read More
Perth on Ice
After a false start last week, when she did a there-and-back-again loop away from her winter territory, Perth started what looks like serious migration north late last week. March 20 she left the area around West Monkton, ON, flying east and then north over the next two days, eventually moving out onto what little ice remains along the southeast shore … Read More
Springtime Restlessness
The official first day of spring doesn’t come until Friday, March 20 (at 10:46 a.m., to be precise), but some of our snowy owls are already feeling its tug as the days lengthen and the sun climbs higher in the sky. Pretty much on schedule, we’re seeing some signs of restlessness, as owls that have been home-bodies start pushing outward, … Read More
Welcoming Perth, a Not-Exactly-New Owl
Perseverance pays off, and the sterling example this winter has been our Ontario colleagues, Charlotte England and Malcolm Wilson, who have spent weeks trekking all around the southwest of the province trying to trap adult snowy owls to deploy transmitters. It’s not that they couldn’t find owls; the trouble was those adults all gave the clear impression of having seen … Read More
A New (Freshly Washed) Face, and an Old Friend
We have a new transmittered owl, and the very surprising return of our oldest veteran, back south for the first time in years. The newbie first. Fulgence is a second-year (first-winter) male snowy owl, rescued from an industrial waste pool in Saint-Fulgence, Québec, about 330 km (235 miles) northeast of Montréal along the Saguenay River on Feb. 4, 2026. Except … Read More
Not a Lot to Report
Apologies for the lack of an update for the past week or so. That was partly due to holiday and family travel, but also because it’s been, well, pretty slow. Thus far we have just one tagged owl that’s sending us data, Hochelaga, who has been moving back and forth across the St. Lawrence River near Montréal since he surprised … Read More
In With a Bang
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. When the Project SNOWstorm team held its annual planning meeting in August, there had been no reports from the Arctic suggesting there’d been a significant snowy owl breeding event anywhere – at least, anywhere that scientists were aware of. After last year’s modestly nice irruption, we were preparing ourselves for a quiet winter without … Read More
And Then There Were … None?
Well, we may finally have reached the end of the 2024-25 snowy owl season, less than two weeks before Memorial Day in the U.S. The last two owls we were still in contact with, Toronto and Rimouski, both failed to check in last evening, May 13, suggesting they may both be outside cell range as they go north. Toronto managed … Read More
And Then There Were Two
Apologies for the long silence — I’ve been out of town the past eight days, serving as guest ornithologist at the Lodge at Little St. Simons Island in Georgia, always a delight but something that doesn’t leave a lot of time for other things. Spring is definitely upon us, and in the past two weeks all but two of our … Read More
Scattering With the Season
And just like that, spring has sprung. Last week’s milder weather seems to have triggered a bit of a mass exodus. After showing very little of the pre-migratory restlessness we sometimes see in late winter, and for the most part remaining hunkered down on their winter territories, in the past 10 days we’ve seen the first big movements to the … Read More