Snowy Owl Melts Hearts at Awards Ceremony
January 21, 2025



I did it! I won my first Golden Owl Pellet Award!

What? Don't tell me you weren't watching the North American Owl Awards last night?! What are you going to talk about around the water cooler with your colleagues at work!? They'll think that you are living in a cave or something!

Well, let me bring you up to date, at least with respect to the accomplishments of yours truly, the Snowy Owl, aka Bubo scandiacus.

You must know, then, that I took home the Award for Heaviest Owl Species in North America! That's right, we Snowy Owls are the heaviest owl species in North America. Incredible, right? And I had some stiff competition, too, since the other nominees were the Great Horned Owl and the Great Gray Owl -- although I have subsequently learned that the Great Gray Owl, for all its size, is just shamming in the weight department: it is really just a big ball of fluff. Its max weight is a disappointing 60 ounces, or less than half the heft of yours truly.

But you should have seen me when they called out my species name as the winner. You could have knocked me over with an owl pellet. I knew that I was heavy, but I had always assumed that the Great Horned Owl was the heaviest owl species in North America. I don't know why. I just figured that that's why they called them "great." But it turns out that my species' maximum weight is just over 104.1 ounces, which is 15 ounces more than the max weight of Bubo virginianus.

And I'm optimistic about next year's Awards Ceremony as well. They tell me that they'll be honoring the owl with the most erratic travel patterns, and you know my species is nothing if not erratic when it comes to our wanderlust. In any given winter, we might travel as far south as Florida, or maybe just to New York state, or maybe all the way out there to Texas or to Missouri. Or I might give Bermuda a go for a change. Who shall say? Then again, I might decide to stay at home in my beloved tundra during certain winters. Heck, I may even fly NORTH in winter. That's right, north! Don't laugh, there are some great hunting opportunities up there in the Arctic Sea when it comes to seabirds and sea ducks.¹

I can see it now: "And the award for Most Erratic Travel Patterns in a North American Owl goes to... the Snowy Owl, Bubo virginianus!"

Thank you so much, folks! Oh, thank you!

Sorry about that, I'm getting carried away.

But I can't believe you didn't see the owl awards last night, you cave dweller, you! Ha! But no worries. I recorded a radio broadcast of the event that you can listen to by clicking here!


1: Project SNOWStorm home page, Project SNOW Storm

I'm a Wanderer
December 17, 2024



Oh, hi there, friend. Welcome to my 2024 breeding ground in Northern Quebec. Did you know that I am the official bird of the Quebec province? It's true. I have been since 1987. Shout out to the Club des ornithologues du Québec for making that happen, by the way¹.

But what brings you up here to the Arctic tundra?

What's that? You've got a few questions about my species? Well, all right then, but please make it quick. I was just getting ready to head south for the season. I'm off to Bermuda this year, just on a lark, you might say. We Snowy Owls do love to travel. Mind you, my mates don't want me to go. They're afraid for my safety. They tell me that a biologist shot a Snowy Owl down there in 2013². Can you believe that? And I was like, what? A biologist was the gunman?

To be fair, though, the owl was preying on the Bermuda petrel, aka the Chowa, which is the national bird of that archipelago, and an endangered species into the bargain. In fact, it was considered extinct until 1951. And it didn't help that the Snowy had set up shop at an airport -- or rather THE airport in Bermuda, namely, L.F. Wade International³, thereby posing a threat to aviation. Not that you can blame the owl, of course, since all airfields look like the perfect hunting grounds from the Snowy Owl point of view.

But that penchant for airports was to cost us dearly as a species in 2013, and not just in Bermuda. You've got to remember that this was the year of a record-breaking Snowy Owl invasion of the lower 48. It was "the largest irruption in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions in perhaps a century,⁴" this according to naturalist author Scott Weidensaul of Project SNOWstorm. We Snowy Owls were popping up at airfields everywhere, catching ground crews off-guard.

They shot and killed three of us that year at JFK, claiming that we were a threat to aviation⁵.

Well, what if we ARE a threat to aviation? That doesn't mean that you have to shoot us. What is it with Americans and guns, anyway? When you guys see a creature that you do not understand, the first thing that occurs to you is to shoot it. That's how the Earth got in so much trouble with aliens in those 1950s sci-fi movies. Any time a creature showed up that you didn't understand, you guys reached for your guns. Pardon me, but that betrays a complete lack of creativity on your part.

Fast forward to 2017, and those ground crews were at it again. They shot another Snowy Owl, this time at a small airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, again in the name of aviation safety⁶.

Well, my North American fans had had enough. They exerted so much pressure on such trigger-happy airports that they changed their ways.

The Port Authority has now instituted a trap-and-relocate operation for Snowy Owls at both JFK airport and La Guardia. And that Wisconsin ground crew is now using falconers to coax Snowies out of harm's way.⁷.

Even the gunslinging biologist in Bermuda has responded to criticism. He is now using the services of statesider Norman Smith to relocate Snowies that pose a threat to the cahow⁸. Smith, by the way, is the same owl lover who has been running a successful Snowy relocation program at Logan Airport since 1981⁹.

That's why my trip is still on to Bermuda. I think that their biologists have learned their lesson about shooting us in cold blood after having been so roundly censured for that practice on social media.

But allow me to clear up a misconception that you guys have about such southerly voyages as mine.

We Snowy Owls are usually not "starving" when we travel down south. Oh, dear no. Our sudden preponderance in the Lower 48 is due instead to the fact that there had been an abundance of lemmings in the Arctic during the previous breeding season. This plenitude, in turn, encouraged females to lay more eggs, and since the female of the species can have as many as 11 chicks in a clutch under favorable circumstances¹⁰, she does so, leading to a baby boom up north.

Are you following me?

And since Snowy Owls have a sort of built-in wanderlust, what your scientists call a migratory instinct, it's no surprise that many of our boomers would up-stakes and head south in winter -- sometimes very far south, indeed, to such places as Florida in the east and Oregon and Texas in the West and Midwest respectively¹¹.

Nor are our destination choices predictable. The same Snowy Owl that travels down to Virginia this winter may touch down in Ottawa in the following year. Some might not travel south at all. And others may even fly north in winter. That's right, north. (They travel to the Arctic Sea to hunt for seabirds and sea ducks in permanent openings in the ice called polynas.)¹²

Confusing, huh? It's almost like we Snowy Owls are playing with you on purpose. We're like: "Let's see what the ornithologists make of THIS trip that I'm taking! Hah!"

I know what you're thinking: Are these irruptions or migrations that you guys are taking? Well, you might want to sit down before I give you the answer.

You see, our winter journeys south are actually... wait for it, folks... irruptive migrations! That's right, irruptive migrations! I did not even know there WAS such a thing until I began browsing the Project SNOWstorm website¹³, where they specialize on Snowy Owl movements. Until then, I had always thought that there were irruptions and there were migrations, and that ne'er the twain shall meet. And so when I heard about irruptive migrations... My goodness! You could have knocked me over with an owl pellet.

By the way, do my nesting habits remind you of any other North American owl species? Think about it. What other North American owl species digs out "scrapes" like this for its nests? Eh? Hint: It likes to hunt in wide open spaces just like me.

Give up? Why, the Short-Eared Owl, of course. It also digs out its own nest, sometimes even in the tundra. But then that species will build its nests in any open area: tundra, grasslands, meadows, savannahs, prairies, dunes, heathlands, you name it¹⁴; whereas we Snowy Owls have tundra on the brain when it comes to nesting¹⁵. That's odd considering the fact that we are so variable in our choice of wintering destinations.

What's that? How do I find my way south? That question is above my pay grade. However, it is said that migrating birds in general find their way using something that scientists call magnetoreception.

How does magnetoreception work?

Oh, that part's easy. The cryptochromes in the eyes of birds can sense magnetic fields by detecting quantum coherence. I thought EVERYBODY knew THAT.

No, seriously, it's complicated. In fact, our scientists are still trying to sort all this stuff out¹⁶. Suffice it to say for now that navigation comes naturally to Snowy Owls like myself, and to migrating birds in general, for that matter.

Oh, look at the time! -- or rather SENSE it using your built in circadian clock! I've got to be going. It's 1,500 miles to Bermuda if it's an inch.

It's time for me to take part in a little of that irruptive migration that I was telling you about, so thanks for the visit, and here I...

What's that? Yes, yes: I will wait until you have your smartphone ready so that you can capture my departure in a video clip. You human beings and your phones! Honestly.

Are you ready at long last? Good. Okay then, here goes nothing!

Bermuda, here I come... so HOLD YOUR FIRE!!!


1: The snowy owl, Qu, Tremblant Express
2: Snowy Owl Discovered Dead In Dockyard, BerNews
3: Snowy Owl Discovered Dead In Dockyard, BerNews
4: What is an irruption?, Project SNOW Storm
5: Snowy Owls Are Being Shot Dead So You Can Travel Safely This Winter, New York Magazine
6: Wittman Regional Airport issues statement regarding snowy owl shooting, Post Crescent
7: Project Soar: Snowy Owl Airport Rescue, Winnebago Audubon Society
8: Snowy Owl Discovered Dead In Dockyard, BerNews
9: Snowy Owl Project, Mass Audubon
10: Snowy Owl, Maryland Zoo
11: Snowy Owl Sightings Map, Cornell Lab: All About Birds
12: Project SNOWStorm home page, Project SNOW Storm
13: Project SNOWStorm home page, Project SNOW Storm
14: What size of habitat is required by the short-eared owl?, Birdful.org
15: Snowy Owl, Audubon
16: Birds Can See Earth's Magnetic Fields, And Now We Know How That's Possible, Science Alert