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.

Perth is the newest — yet also among the oldest — of our tagged snowy owls. (©Charlotte England)

It’s not that they couldn’t find owls; the trouble was those adults all gave the clear impression of having seen this routine before. Either the birds ignored the trap entirely, or would land near it, checking out the safely caged hamsters that serve as the lure, but never actually taking the bait. “We think most of these owls have been banded in the past, probably by us,” Charlotte told me in one text exchange after another fruitless excursion earlier this winter. After all, Charlotte and Malcolm were banding snowy owls for years before they started tagging them for SNOWstorm. And adult snowies have long memories.

But still, they kept at it – and last week it paid off. On Feb. 26, they captured an adult female in Perth County, luring her down from the same roadside pole from which they’d caught the late juvenile owl Jolene last winter. When they got this new owl in the hand, they may have confirmed Charlotte’s suspicion about why so many of the owls were wary – she was already banded. What’s more, she was banded by Charlotte herself on April 1, 2020, about 90 km (56 miles) to the northeast of her current location. It’s no April Fools joke that based on her wing molt, she was already more than four years old at the time. Add another almost six years, and this is a very well-traveled girl, and an experienced survivor.

Our usual naming protocol is to pick a nickname that corresponds in some way with the capture or release location, so now this newest SNOWstorm owl is Perth. She also has company, because she’s living cheek-by-jowl with Atwood, also an adult female, who is using much the same area around Monkton, ON, again this winter. (Note, though, that they’re keeping their distance from one another – Perth moves directly through the area Atwood is using, without stopping. Adult snowies tend to be standoffish and territorial.)

There’s not a lot of difference in Perth’s appearance between 2020 (top) and last week (bottom) — myths aside, snowy owls don’t always get lighter with age. The light was fading, so the bottom photo was taken before they fitted her with a transmitter. (©Charlotte England – both)

Charlotte shared photos of Perth from 2020, along with those taken last week, noting that there’s not much difference between them in Perth’s appearance – a caution to those who still think snowy owls inevitably become less heavily marked with age. Males usually do, but there’s a lot of variation among females, and other than pure white adult males and the most heavily marked young females, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to try to age and sex snowy owls from a distance, especially when perched.

Not much else to report. We keep waiting and hoping to hear again from Otter, and retrieve the remainder of his 2025-26 data, but he’s keeping us in suspense. The other owls – Emblème, Hochelaga, Fulgence and Atwood – are more or less where they’ve been the past couple of weeks. As the days get longer, we may even start to see some pre-migratory restlessness, especially from Hochelaga, who as an adult male needs to get back north as early as possible so he can potentially stake out a territory before the females come back. The same may be true of Otter, though we hope he doesn’t leave before connecting at least one more time.