Embleme’s movements since she was released Jan. 16, 2026, with a transmitter. (©Project SNOWstorm and Google Earth)

We have a newly tagged owl on the snowy fields of southern Québec – one with a fitting name.

Embleme (so named because the snowy owl is the official provincial bird of Québec) is a first-winter female trapped Jan. 11, 2026, at the Montréal-Trudeau International Airport. (©Guy Fitzgerald/UQROP)

She is Embleme, a first-winter female trapped Jan. 11, 2026, at the Montréal-Trudeau International Airport by Falcon Environment. The good folks at Falcon transported her to Dr. Guy Fitzgérald, an instructor at the University of Montréal and president of Union quebecoise de rehabilitation des oiseaux de proie (UQROP), a provincial network providing raptor rehabilitation services in Québec. Guy held her for several days to confirm her good health, then fitted her with one of our new, lighter-weight 30g GPS-GSM transmitters, so her movements can be tracked.

She was released Jan. 16, 2026, across the river and well away from the airport, the latest of more than 45 airport relocation snowy owls we have tagged since Project SNOWstorm began in 2013. The information we’ve gained from this ongoing project now informs decisions by airport authorities and contractors like Falcon Environmental about how and where to move snowies to minimize the chances they come back to the airfield. (You can read the article we published in the Journal of Wildlife Management laying our findings and recommendations here.)

Embleme heads back to the wild — and, we hope away from airports. (©Guy Fitzgerald/UQROP)

And the nickname? We usually name our tagged owls for their capture or release site, but in this case Guy asked that we name her Embleme, because the snowy owl is Québec’s official provincial bird, chosen in 1987 by the National Assembly as a sign of the province’s commitment to wildlife conservation.

Since her release Embleme has stayed south of the St. Lawrence River, and in fact moved 36 km (22 miles) even farther south from her release site near the Yamaska River near the villages of Saint-Jude and Saint-Hugues. By Jan. 23 she had looped north and moved east across the Richelieu River at Beloeil. Hopefully she’ll settle in, and that’s the last Falcon will see of her at the airport.

Meanwhile, our the other owl we’re following this winter, Hochelaga, has also been behaving himself lately, likewise remaining on the south side of the St. Lawrence and staying away, at least for the moment, from the airport. But he’s a restless guy, and has traded back and forth across the St. Lawrence a number of times already this winter, so it may not last.

Newton’s transmitter remains offline, but we continue to hope that longer days and more sun will bring it back. Charlotte England and Malcolm Wilson just wrapped up what they described as a grueling week of trapping in southern Ontario as far north as the Bruce Peninsula, finding relatively few snowies; the most they saw in a day was six. In all, they set their traps 12 times, but only two of the owls made any response to the lure at all, and neither was caught. Out in North Dakota, Matt Solensky from the USGS Northern Prairie Science Center spent weeks this winter looking for snowy owls, and found just two, one of them dead from what proved to be avian influenza. It’s been a tough winter.