Snowy Owl!

Seeing a Snowy Owl is now one of the highlights of our winter.  They're such a beautiful bird, and you're simply lucky if you spot one over the season.  We spotted one sitting on a fencepost by the roadside as we drove home yesterday.  Of course as we slowed down, turned around, drove back and stopped it lifted off that nearby fencepost and flew heavily across the field, to land in a distant tree.

The Snowy Owl, Bubo scandiacus, is our largest owl, and is normally resident of the distant Arctic, where it nests and raises its young, while dining on lemmings and other prey.  It is actually an opportunistic feeder and will take whatever prey it can get.  It certainly doesn't find many lemmings down here, but if it does catch a small rodent it gobbles it down headfirst in one big gulp!  It will sit still for hours, just swivelling its head watching for prey. 

Living in the Arctic they nest on the ground of course, and unlike most owls, are diurnal, active during daylight - because of course in the Arctic summer it is daylight all day long!  Living in the Arctic, it's camaflouge is its white colour.  The whitest ones are the mature males, making this one probably a female.

It's widely understood that owls come south during the winter if they are facing a food shortage, when the lemming populations crash.  So some winters they may be here and others not.  But recently I read a blog post by David at Travels With Birds reporting on research that suggests the opposite - during years of abundant lemming populations, the owls can raise as many as 7 or 8 young, and the young disperse widely seeking their own territories.  At any rate, it seems very special to see one down here in the winter.  This is only the third year I've ever seen one.

They often sit right on the ground to hunt in the Arctic, and if you see them during the winter here they'll likely be sitting on a fencepost, small tree, or other spot where they can get a view if they're not right on the ground.  The open fields of our farms obviously appeal to them.  Last year when we saw quite a few in one location north of Chesley, all of them were just sitting on the ground.  We found them very hard to spot when first we tried, but after you've spotted one in this landscape, you know what to watch for.

It was getting toward dusk when we spotted this one, and if we hadn't seen it nearby and watched it fly, I'm not sure we would have seen it at all.  Could you spot it?  Luckily, I have a great bird spotter in the navigator's seat, 'cause I was just watching straight down the road.  For anyone local interested, this was about a mile north of Conn, about an hour south of us here in Meaford.

Linking to: