Locations as of Nov. 22 of the eight surviving snowy owl chicks tagged this summer on Bylot Island: Ranch (male, orange); Vallé (female, purple); Gouze (male? black); Pointe (female? green); Luthie (male, yellow); Hoodoo (male? white); Hummock (female? red); CJG (female blue). ©Project SNOWstorm
Welcome to the first update of Project SNOWstorm’s 11th season of snowy owl research. Whether you’ve been with us since our first winter in 2013-14, or have just learned about our work, we welcome your interest. It’s shaping up to be an interesting winter, with the first significant, early-season push of snowy owls into the East and Midwest in several years, so buckle up for what we hope will be a great 2024-25.
As always, we’re starting the new season with what we know about the summer 2024 breeding season the Canadian Arctic and subarctic, from which the owls we see and track come. And as usual, we don’t have a lot to go on, since the North is remote and lightly inhabited, and most of the people who live there aren’t in routine contact with those of us down south who are curious to know if there was a major snowy owl breeding event in their area. Folks in largely Indigenous communities have plenty of more pressing concerns than satisfying the curiosity of owl biologists.
The tundra landscape of Bylot Island in Nunavut, one of the largest uninhabited islands in the world at more than 11,000 sq km (4,200 sq. miles). (©JF Therrien)
Bylot Island lies just north of Baffin Island, the largest island in Canada. (Wikipedia Commons)
But the big news is that, after four frustrating years of delays beyond our control, we and our colleagues in the International Snowy Owl Working Group were finally able to deploy 10 very small, battery-powered satellite transmitters on juvenile snowy owls on Bylot Island in Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. We piloted this study in 2019 on Bylot, when founding SNOWstorm team member Jean-François (J.F.) Therrien from Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania was able to deploy six transmitters on young owls on Bylot, part of his annual field work on the island with Laval University from Québec, which has been conducting long-term research on the island for decades.
Our plans to follow up with six more transmitters in 2020 were derailed by the pandemic and a travel ban that year and the next in order to keep small bush communities safe from Covid-19. Then in 2022 and 2023, there was no snowy owl nesting activity on Bylot. Throughout those four years, J.F. kept nursing the transmitters, periodically exercising their batteries to keep them fresh and operational, in the hope we’d be eventually able to use them.
This year, with fingers crossed, Project SNOWstorm purchased four additional new transmitters for the effort, because the battery life of the old ones might be questionable, and the original batteries could not be replaced. (Like all our work, the newly purchased units were made possible by your donations — thank you.) The plan was to deploy the new units first, but if J.F. and the Laval team located enough young owls, to also deploy the older transmitters and see how well they functioned. We also provided funds to help Laval plug a gap in their transportation budget caused by sky-high fuel prices; getting around uninhabited parts of the Arctic is expensive.
The transmitters weigh just 17 grams, versus 45 grams for the GPS/GSM units we normally use. They are programmed to take a point every five days, and once they have three GPS points in the bank, they transmit that data. So it’s not like the hourly fixes and three-times-a-week transmission we are used to, and we’ll have to be patient as the data comes in — but this way, the small batteries should last for up to 18 months.
No one knew quite what to expect when J.F. and the Laval crew headed north this summer. The field work had already been delayed to late July by a helicopter crash earlier in the season that, miraculously, did not injure anyone, but took the chopper they were intending to use out of commission.
Two fluffy snowy owl chicks crouch in their nest on Bylot Island. (©JF Therrien)
Some years both species of lemmings on Bylot, collared lemmings and brown lemmings, undergo a simultaneous peak in their cyclical population, creating boom times for predators like snowy owls and Arctic foxes; other times, only one does, and it’s a leaner summer. This proved to be one of those one-lemming years. “Our team conducted systematic surveys and detected some breeding raptors (snowy owls, rough-legged hawks), but the overall abundance remained low, totalling nine snowy owl nests on our 400 km2 study area, 10 times lower than the numbers recorded during simultaneous species peak years,” J.F. said.
To find the six nests whose chicks they tagged, J.F. and the Laval team covered hundreds of kilometers on foot. (©J.F. Therrien)
“After long hikes with heavy backpacks and hundreds (it felt like thousands!) of kilometers on foot across the vast open tundra landscape, we were able to successfully deploy 10 units on as many fledglings from six nests,” J.F. said. The tags were deployed between July 27 and Aug. 2.
Pointe, a presumed female chick, is fitted for her satellite transmitter. (©J.F. Therrien)
The results so far have been fascinating. Nine of the 10 transmitters are sending data, though one of them has been stationary on Bylot for some time and likely signals a mortality. That’s to be expected, since the first months after fledging are the most dangerous of a young bird’s life. Frankly, having eight of them still moving is better than we would have expected, and we should be ready for additional losses as time goes on. Bear in mind, though, that understanding juvenile mortality is a prime goal of this project. Of the apparently surviving chicks, half were judged to be male, and half female, though sexing young snowies by plumage at that age is a little iffy, which is why some are listed as male? or female?.
As you can see from the map, as of Nov. 22 all of the remaining juveniles were still hanging around Bylot or adjacent Baffin Island. This surprised me, since there have already been many reports of snowy owls, most of them also apparent juveniles, as far south as Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. When I talked with J.F., he had two possible explanations. One is that even though winter has arrived up there, those owls are still facing a long, over-water crossing if they leave Baffin Island, and they may be waiting for sea ice to form, especially those hanging out on the shoreline. The owls we’re seeing in southern Canada and the U.S. may have come from places like northern Québec, where it’s an easier overland trip all the way south.
A more intriguing possibility is that perhaps it’s normal for some young birds to stay so far north, so late. We really don’t know, because there’s been so little tracking on this age group before. We only see the owls that come south, but not any that may remain north. Maybe this is typical; who knows, maybe the ones that migrate south are really the minority. When J.F. was doing his doctoral research satellite-tracking adult snowies tagged on Bylot, one surprise was that some of them stayed north, or even flew farther north and wintered on the sea ice. These birds are still very much a mystery.
SNOWstorm team member Dr. Jean-Francois Therrien, right, and Dr. Joel Bêty, principal investigator of Laval University’s long-running Bylot Island research, with two of the young snowies to be tagged. (©J.F. Therrien)
Because these transmitters are Lotek satellite tags rather than the cellular-based CTT transmitters we use for our regular tracking, we can’t create automatically updated maps as we do for most of our tagged owls, although we’ll do our best to provide periodic updates. We chose the small, battery-powered Lotek tags because we felt they posed the least risk to young birds in their first, highly dangerous months. But if we get lucky, and one or more of them come far enough south, we’d love to attempt to trap them and replace their battery-powered sat tags with our solar-powered GPS/GSM transmitters that last for years. It would be the first time we’ve been able to follow the life of known-origin snowy owls over the course of years. A long-shot, but you never know.
As I said earlier, there’s been an moderately heavy and early push of snowy owls into southern Canada and the eastern and Midwestern U.S. Since there wasn’t a lot of nesting activity on Bylot, where are the owls coming from? Judging from plumage (always more of an art than a science) most of them appear to be juveniles, so there were babies hatched somewhere.
eBird reports of snowy owls through Dec. 1, 2024. (eBird/Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
One possibility is the Ungava Peninsula in northern Québec, where we had second-hand reports indicating some degree of snowy owl breeding, though the magnitude was unclear. Interestingly, the Ungava was the epicenter of the 2013-14 mega-irruption when thousands of snowies came south, and which was the genesis of Project SNOWstorm. No one’s suggesting this year was one of those years, but it does seem to be shaping up into the first moderately heavy flight in several winters. We likely won’t really know how big until sometime in December.
There’s more news from the north, including how one of our longest-tracked owls, Otter, spent his summer, but that’s for a future blog post. In the meantime, be sure you’re signed up for our alerts because this is shaping up to be an interesting season.
29 Comments on “The 2024 Arctic Report”
I love snow owls so much ty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just saw my first snowy owl! Been living on Great Cranberry Island Maine 04625for over 20 years. this is a dream com true..I got my binoculars inside and held it up to glass door but he flew away…hope my tree becomes a favored resting spot!
We spotted a Snowy Owl in Bayonne NJ on 11/24/2024 on the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway along the Bayonne Golf Course. It was sitting on the first Osprey platform when you approach the big green bridge over the wetland. Numerous photographers captured photos that were posted on Facebook on the Bayonne Nature Club page. The owl was also reported to eBird.
Just when I was thinking it’s getting to be that time of year again, this update happily showed up in my inbox. Looking forward to another winter of snowy news. Thanks, Scott, for this very interesting update, and thanks to Dr. Therrien and team for their ongoing research and conservation efforts!
Will this data be available on Movebank?
It should be eventually, but I’m not sure how quickly since JF needs to download from each transmitter individually. It’s not as smooth and seamless as what we get with the GPS/GSM transmitters.
I love this fully detailed report. I love owls. Especially the endangered short eared owl.
Please sign and share the petition to help them in Iroquois Wildlife Refuge.
https://www.change.org/p/prevent-stamp-from-destroying-vital-wetlands-in-iroquois-national-wildlife-refuge
A data center doesn’t belong in the Atlantic Migratory Routes
I definitely think this project has become successful and moving forward with the updates. Its incredible to learn more about those magnificent creatures. Living in southern Ontario they are sighted Nov-Feb, and through the past few years fluctuating with numbers. I know our local rescue team has had to step in, due to snowies being exhausted, malnutrition, ect. Thank goodness they helped. It’s imperative to know to keep a distance when they hunt. Knowledge is key for their success.
I’ve retained nothing. I just read after viewing those tweens (affectionately named) Sprocket and Gizmo getting their fancy new hardware.
Painfully cute!
It seems that five of those birds have already moved anywhere from 400 to 800 miles already. If half of your subjects are male and keeping with some prevailing wisdom that it’s the young males the more often comes south.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the majority of those five are males for the presumed males.
Could we get an update on the presumed sex that correlates with the color of the map tracking?
There’s some evidence that in irruption years young males go farther south than other ages classes, but that’s based only on the snowy owls that show up south of the Arctic. We don’t know how true it might be for those that stay farther north (if, in fact, many juveniles actually do stay north).
As for gender, what we know (or presume) about the birds’ sex was based on their incomplete natal plumage at the time they were tagged. There’s no way to update anything since then, unless one or more of them come far enough south to be recaptured.
Elaine did you give them those names :-)
Great news and great photos
I’m not sure the researchers would think they are appropriate, but yes…. Haha
Looking forward to hearing about Otter Scott and hoping for more owls coming back into range to see where they’ve been vacationing!
The owlets were given French nicknames, listed in the map caption, that generally reflect landscape features like Pointe and Vallé, but they were assigned after the fact by J.F. because it’s hard for anyone (including researchers) to keep transmitter ID numbers straight. Not sure which of the 10 are the two in the photo of J.F. and Joel Bêty.
I saw a female yesterday December 1st in Northern North Dakota near the Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge. First it was sitting on a power pole then flew off to a field when I located it again. I have seen a female owl in this same area the past few years so I am thinking its the same one ? Thanks so much for the info & report.
I saw a female yesterday December 1st in Northern North Dakota near the Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge. First it was sitting on a power pole then flew off to a field when I located it again. I have seen a female owl in this same area the past few years so I am thinking its the same one ? Thanks so much for the info & report.
Hard to say, David. We’ve seen strong site fidelity with some of our adult owls (Baltimore, Hardscrabble and Wells in particular) while other adults have been all over the map, like Stella, tagged in Ontario but who subsequently wintered in Montana and Saskatchewan. If there’s a rule, a snowy owl will break it.
I took a picture of an adult snowing on our shore (on Amherst Island) on Nov 29th, 2024.
Like Elaine, I was paralyzed by the cute of those two nubbly owlets. Have to respect the talons on Gizmo though! Excellent update. Bold, putting transmitters on nestlings. I wish them all success. JZ
Scott, this is great news!
We are so excited about our upcoming Winter Raptor tour with you in February! It would be amazing to see one of the newly tagged snowy owls in New York State . The Winter Raptor trip raises funds for Project SNOWstorm. We have 2 spots left. Help Project SNOWstorm help the snowies, learn about PS’s work, and have a great time! https://www.destinationwildlife.com/experiences/winter-owls-and-others-to-benefit-project-snowstorm-mz2ff
Can’t wait for the trip, and it sure looks like we’ll have snowies in the region this winter.
Thank you for all your work and the exciting stories about snowies.
Thanks for the very interesting update on the newly tagged owlets!!! Great photos as well. Looking forward to see what Otter has been up to and hoping more tagged snowies show up this winter.
thanks for the update. we live 2 hours south of chicago, illinois. this tuesday, i spotted the first snowy owl seen in our county in two years. we think it’s a juvenile male because the terminal barring on its tail doesn’t extend all across. fingers crossed for more sightings.
Great news, I was bracing myself for another lean year.
Tanks for the update, love the photo of the juvenile with the transmitter,
We’ve got 2 owls where I am and both of them were greeted by the local (ravens) reception committee . :-)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y8LdRSy7RqXftQCy9
That owl is thinking, how far south do I have to go to leave these pushy ravens behind?
I reported above finding a Snowy 2 hours south of Chicago. Two days later, I located a second Snowy on December 5 in an area 5 mile north of where I found the first owl. I use an 800 mm camera lens and with Snowy Owls, I shoot in a crop mode, not full frame, which makes my 800mm like a1120mm lens. This allows me to stay significantly far away to observe with stressing the owls. The second owl may be female, as the markings are consistent, but its terminal tail barring is almost across the entire tail feathers. I’m not certain of the sex, but it’s a second and different bird. I reported the first owl on E-bird, but because a number of people came down from the Chicago area and were quite aggressive, I have not reported on E-bird the finding of the second Snowy.
Thanks for all you do in your research of these wonderful birds. I have many photos of both owls if folks are interested in seeing them.
Jeffrey, Thank you for your support of SNOWstorm, and for keeping the welfare of the owls foremost. eBird is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to snowy owls; we certainly depend on it to gauge the magnitude and extent of any given winter’s irruption, but it can really put a metaphorical target on the back of snowies near population centers and in easily accessible locations like beaches and parks. I’m more and more inclined to wish that state-level eBird reviewers treated snowy owls as sensitive species whose locations are masked, at least in regions near the fringe of their normal winter distribution where they are fewest and where pressure from birders and photographers can be most intense, even though that will rob us of an easy way to track how many are where.
As always, we urge people to view snowy owls from a distance, ideally from a vehicle, and to remember that if you’re on foot and the owl is paying attention to you, to please back off. You should never approach so closely that you flush the owl, but the inevitable human instinct is to try to get “just a little bit” closer, until it flies.