Badger, a very dark immature female, was trapped just northeast of Freedom WI, at 5:10 PM during the very last light of 30 December 2017. This culminated three long days of concentrated work by a crew of raptor banders working cooperatively to place Project SNOWStorm transmitters on owls in Northeast Wisconsin. The field work spanned the area from Lower Green Bay to Pulaski to near Freedom and was made more difficult by the bitter cold and strong winds of a “Polar Vortex” that was gripping the northern and northeastern United States between Christmas and New Year’s days. This is the 57th owl fitted with a transmitter by project volunteers and funds for this transmitter and associated data charges were donated by the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Public Service Foundation. She disappeared while migrating north in April 2018; three years later her transmitter and harness were discovered on Manitou Island in Lake Superior, where it appears she died in late May 2018.
