Snowy owls sighting brings back memories

I got a little shiver when I read John Clegg's e-mail last week.

"We have lived in Uxbridge for 25 years, in the country, and have seen many types of birds and animals," he wrote. "But never a great snowy owl." Until that day.

Instantly I had images of snowy owls I've seen over the years. One flying low over the tundra along the Coppermine River, when I was on a canoe trip in the Northwest Territories one summer. One clinging atop a telephone pole on the Leslie Street Spit, feathers ruffled by a battering winter wind. One perched on the Town of Whitby sign at Intrepid Park, its plumage as white as the snowbanks around it.

John Clegg's snowy owl was pure white, too. He said it sat six feet from his window for three hours, preening its feathers. When it took off at last, its wingspan was four to five feet wide.

These great, ghostly raptors from the Arctic move south only when populations of voles and other small rodents they feed on plummet. It's been a few years since many appeared in southern Ontario, so hearing about John's visitor made me wonder if this might be a snowy owl irruption year. That it was pure white -- an adult male -- was also telling, for juvenile and female owls often wander south more often than males, which stay close to their breeding territory if at all possible.

Checking various bird hotlines gave me my answer: snowy owls have been spotted recently near Ottawa, Kingston and Cobourg, and as far south as Connecticut. They tend to seek out open, treeless country that looks like their tundra home, so keep an eye out for big white shapes on fenceposts or along lakeshores. Beneath those fluffy feathers they may be seriously underweight, maybe even starving, after flying so far with little to eat.

Perhaps even more indicative of low mice and vole numbers up north and more exciting to birders, was a hawk owl that's been hanging out at the Leslie Spit for several days. These barred and spotted, long-tailed owls of the boreal forest seldom come this far south hunting for food.

Most owl species living south of the Arctic Circle, with its 24 hours of daylight in summer, are nocturnal, but northern hawk owls regularly hunt by day, perching atop trees and swooping down on their prey.

Yet another northerner that irrupts south sporadically is the boreal owl. One was spotted on Leslie Street Spit last week and they're sometimes found on Amherst Island, east of Napanee, which is famous for owls. Only 10 inches tall, they tuck themselves out of the wind in evergreens by day. Black markings around their white facial disk give them a surprised look.

Nature queries: 905-725-2116 or mcarney@interlinks.net.

---

Durham resident Margaret Carney, in addition to writing nature-appreciation columns, has also published several children's books.