Hochelaga is named for the original Iroquoian village at what is now Montréal. He was trapped by biologist Julie Lecours of Falcon Environmental on March 2, 2021, at the Montréal-Trudeau International Airport, and was already banded; records showed Falcon had originally trapped him at the airport on March 4, 2016, by which time he was already mature and almost completely white. He was fitted this time with a transmitter by SNOWstorm team member Rebecca McCabe, moved away from the airport and released.
He migrated north and spent the summer of 2021 on Southampton Island in the Canadian Arctic, and remained far north until mid-December, 2021, when he flew rapidly south back to Montréal. After migrating northwest to the central Arctic on the Boothia Peninsula in spring 2022, he then remained in the north over the subsequent winter of 2022-23, never coming farther south than central James Bay.
In spring 2023 he flew east and north to Southampton Island and then backtracked to the Ungava Peninsula, where he remained until migrating rapidly south in late December 2023, arriving back in Montréal Jan. 14, 2024. He wintered as usual near the airport, and was last in contact March 17, 2024, at a small community halfway up the eastern side of James Bay.
Then he went dark for 22 months, until he checked in, back at the Montréal airport, on Dec. 21, 2025, uploading almost 21,000 GSP points that showed most — but not all — of his movements during that time.
The summer of 2024 he apparently nested in Québec’s northern Ungava Peninsula, based on the very dense, highly concentrated cluster of points from May through September, but his transmitter stopped collecting GPS data at the end of September 2024, presumably because of a mechanical glitch. (His transmitter had previously been deployed on two other owls, both in Michigan — Wolverine, who managed to remove his harness, and Buckeye, replacing her 2015 transmitter that had failed. Unfortunately, Buckeye died in March 2020 while migrating north, but her transmitter was recovered and reused on Hochelaga.)
Based on eBird reports and photographs, we’re confident Hochelaga spent the winter of 2024-25 back at his old haunts on and near the Montréal airport, though his transmitter never connected. That could have been the same glitch, or it may have been because the transmitter uses 2G technology, and most Canadian and American cell companies have transitioned to 5G or LTE networks. But as he migrated north in April 2025, his transmitter again started collecting hourly GPS points, so we know he spent the summer of 2025 in the central Canadian Arctic, moving around the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island, though he showed no sign of settling down and nesting that season. He remained fairly far north until late autumn, making several rapid movements back to Montréal in early December 2025.
If he can be recaptured, Hochelaga’s old transmitter will be replaced with a new, LTE-compatible version. Hochelaga’s much-used transmitter was underwritten by generous contributions from the public to Project SNOWstorm.
We are raising $15,000 this year for Snowy Owl research.
We're continuing our work this winter, learning more about these majestic Arctic predators, but we can't do it without your help. Your donation to Project SNOWstorm is tax-deductible through our institutional home, the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art in Pennsylvania, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
