{"id":1846,"date":"2015-03-12T13:34:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T17:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.projectsnowstorm.org\/?p=1846"},"modified":"2015-03-12T13:40:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T17:40:32","slug":"two-new-owls-and-a-surprise-from-erie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.projectsnowstorm.org\/posts\/two-new-owls-and-a-surprise-from-erie\/","title":{"rendered":"Two New Owls (and a Surprise from Erie)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hemostats<\/a>

Hemostats hold the Teflon ribbon harness securely while Chris Neri and Nova Mackentley carefully adjust Whitefish Point’s new transmitter. (Those little speckles in her feathers? Chewing lice, which all birds have, but are a lot more visible on a snowy owl.) (\u00a9Chris Neri)<\/p><\/div>\n

The past few days have finally held a hint of spring in parts of the Northeast and Midwest where it’s been a long, frigid, snowy winter — but we’re still charging\u00a0ahead, with two more newly tagged owls to introduce, and a very cool update from one of our 2014 birds.<\/p>\n

\"Gene<\/a>

Gene Jacobs and Reedsville, just after he caught the adult female in eastern Wisconsin. (\u00a9Mike Mathes, Tri-County News)<\/p><\/div>\n

In Wisconsin, Gene Jacobs trapped and tagged an adult female snowy owl that tipped the scales at 2,137g (4.7 lbs.), southeast of Reedsville, in Manitowoc County near Collins Marsh. (That’s about 25 miles [45 km] south of where Gene tagged Kewaunee last winter.) Reedsville’s\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>transmitter was underwritten by donations to Project SNOWstorm.<\/p>\n

That’s the second SNOWstorm owl tagged this winter in Wisconsin; last month Goose Pond was tagged and relocated from an airport to the Goose Pond Audubon Sanctuary near Arlington.<\/p>\n

And in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Nova Mackentley and Chris Neri from Whitefish Point Bird Observatory tagged another adult female — the bird occupying the territory immediately adjacent to Chippewa, the owl first UP owl tagged this winter. They nicknamed the new owl Whitefish Point<\/strong><\/a>, for the world-famous owl migration hotspot just to the north in Chippewa County, and her transmitter was sponsored by an anonymous donor.<\/p>\n

They got this exceedingly cool, kinda spooky video of Whitefish Point taking off into the snowy darkness, which Nova shot with a hand-held GoPro:<\/p>\n