As those of you who live in the northeastern U.S. or eastern Canada already know, it’s been an exceptionally cold and very snowy winter in this part of North America. Here in New Hampshire we experienced the coldest December on record, and the thermometer has only dropped since then. According to Environment Canada, while January featured a brief spell of … Read More
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost
In 2025 Project SNOWstorm, in cooperation with Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, contracted with Dr. Diego Gallego García of Argentina to conduct a post-doctoral analysis of an enormous set of spring and summer movement data from snowy owls in the Arctic and subarctic, working with Dr. Rebecca McCabe at Hawk Mountain. The initial analysis covered more than 40 individual owls … Read More
The Pull of the North
Breaking, and very unwelcome news: As I was preparing to post this update, we learned that Roc, the adult female tagged by Tom McDonald’s team at the Douglass-Greater Rochester (NY) airport earlier this winter, was found dead along on off-ramp from I-390 close to the airport, the apparent victim of a vehicle collision. We’re grateful to the Monroe County Sheriff’s … Read More
On the Move (Direction, um…Uncertain)
The past couple of weeks have seen some pulses of late-winter warmth into the Northeast, and along with longer days, it’s definitely having an effect on some of our owls. This is the time of year when we expect breeding-age adults especially to get antsy, and several of them have indeed begun moving in a noticeable way — though in … Read More
One, Two, Three New Owls
This winter has been dominated mostly by news of our many returning snowies, with only three newly tagged owls, all relocated from the Montréal airport — Aimé, who immediately returned to the airfield and was killed by the back-blast of a taxiing jet, and Nicolet and Odanak, both of whom also returned to the airport but have thus far mostly … Read More
Here, or There?
To stay, or go: That is the question. Stella, one of our transmittered alumni, was originally tagged four years ago, in January 2018 on Amherst Island on the northeastern edge of Lake Ontario. She was a juvenile then, having hatched the previous summer. When she migrated north that spring, she swung wide to the west, up the western shore of … Read More
A D.C. Celebrity
We’ve had some interesting developments with our tagged owls, but at the national level, the biggest snowy owl news this past week has been the growing attention on a snowy that’s wintering in downtown Washington, D.C., and appearing most every night like clockwork at Union Station, within view of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to drawing crowds of birders, photographers … Read More
Late Yul-tide Greetings
The last gift of Yuletide came a little late this year for Project SNOWstorm. On Sunday evening, Jan. 9, we were surprised and delighted to see that Yul — an adult female originally captured at the Montréal airport in November 2019, and named for that airport’s international code, YUL — had just made a late return from the North. What’s … Read More
Columbia and Fond du Lac: An Update
While we’re excited about our two new Québec owls, Nicolet and Odanak, we’re also keeping a close eye on our returnees from past winters, especially two in the upper Midwest, Columbia and Fond du Lac. Columbia, you may recall, returned Nov. 25 and uploaded part of her migration data from last spring, then went dark while her battery recharged. Two … Read More
A New Season, and Old Friends Return
Welcome back, everyone, to the start of Project SNOWstorm’s eighth season of snowy owl tracking and research — and the timing is perfect, because in the past few days we’ve heard from three of our returning snowies, back south after a summer in the Arctic and subarctic. We also have news on what a fourth owl — Otter, who has … Read More