This female was captured by a four-person SNOWstorm team Jan. 15, 2018, on the south shore of Amherst Island, Ontario, at the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. She was part of an ongoing study to determine the extent to which 27 large wind turbines, being installed on Amherst, impact the movements of wintering snowy owls there. At the time she was a first-winter juvenile.

She returned south Nov. 15, 2018, checking in from southern Saskatchewan after spending the summer on Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic. She spent the winter of 2018-19 in northeastern Montana, then migrated north for the summer of 2019 to Lougheed Island, one of the most remote and northerly parts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. She migrated south in October 2019 to southern Manitoba, wintering near Boissevain, MB.

Stella migrated north in April 2020, summering on King William Island, Nunavut. She headed south beginning in September 2020, reaching eastern North Dakota by the end of November and wintering in North and South Dakota. She migrated north in April 2021, and nested for the first time at age 4 on Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic. She checked in November 2021 in southern Saskatchewan, where she spent the winter of 2021-22.

Stella’s transmitter was underwritten with generous donations from the public to Project SNOWstorm.


Latest Updates