Snowy Owl Invasion!

Snowy Owl Invasion!  Tracking An Unusual Migration by Sandra Markle                    Hardback Book: 48 pages                   

Due to global warming and the ecological environment change going on in the frozen tundra of the arctic circle,  food supplies of the snowy owls, predominantly in the arctic – lemmings (small rodent like creatures) have been diminishing so the snowy owls have been migrating further south for food supplies in the last 6+ years.    Whereas previously it was extremely unusual to see a snowy owl around the great lakes, or in upstate New York now snowy owls have been spotted quite often in Washington D.C.,  sightings have been reported in Missouri and even as far south as Florida!    The snowies are coming!

The bad news is these beautiful birds tend to congregate around airports in urban areas.    Bad for the birds and the flight crew.   Maybe they think the planes are big birds and if they are there it must be full of good sources of food, whatever their reasoning, they are having to be caught/trapped and moved to other areas.    The funny thing is, the birds tend to return to the airports.   Snowies are coming down from the arctic so they aren’t worried about flight distance.     Two groups of scientists and volunteers have have joined to form Project SNOWStorm and are capturing as many of the snowies as they can and have raised funds to pay for GPS tracking devices to check the actual migration pattern of each individual bird.   Each unit weighs about as much as 8 quarters and is about 3 inches long by 2 inches wide and is mounted on the snowy’s back via straps attached to the birds under their wings and looks like they are carrying a backpack.     Prior to the GPS units, snowys were trapped and tagged with metal rings etched with where they were trapped, when, their weight and height and who did the trapping, now with the GPS units, which are powered by solar energized batteries by the way, can be tracked at any time as long as the batteries are up and some birds go off the grid for a time then turn back up with the memory in tact showing where they have gone, the location, date and time the unit either went out of range – too far up in the artic terrain for cell towers to transmit their locations or if the solar batteries were not receiving a charge for some reason, ie. the bird fluffed its feathers up over the unit blocking the sun from reaching it or up in the arctic during the winter season of 6 months of twilight (no sun).    Fascinating read on the urbanization of former wild life.    The birds stand about 24 inches tall and make a formidable presence sitting atop buildings, perching on towers, etc.      The scientists are logging information constantly on their whereabouts, the new eating patterns as they move into new territories with differing fare (ducks, geese, rabbits, rats, muskrats, voles etc.).    The GPS trackers have observed that even when a snowy’s migration pattern goes over the Atlantic Ocean of the great lakes, the St. Lawrence River, the Miississippi River the birds tend to not really seem to care much for fish and will tend to hunt land animals instead.   A beautifully illustrated book with lots of good information.   I had never really thought about the migration of birds and animals with the depleting food supplies of the arctic lands diminishing forcing them to search further south to sustain themselves, hence why polar bears, black bears, moose, etc. are seen turning up in towns, more and more in North America, Canada and the U.S. as game either is hunted to extinction as temperatures rise and new feeding patterns and breeding locations become necessary for survival.     Excellent book.   I highly recommend this one.