Faithful reader Alice Wagner posed this question after seeing my last column, which recounted the saga of me trying to photograph a female snowy owl my wife and I were seeing regularly near the Outagamie County Regional Airport.
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| Photos by Jordan Feucht |
“I wondered, how do you know this is one owl, the same owl, at each different place you and your wife saw it?” Alice asked.
I explained that the black bar pattern on the owl identified it as a female. The pattern, which can vary substantially among individuals, and the close proximity of the sightings left me fairly confident we were seeing the same owl, a winter visitor for the arctic driven south by a short food supply.
Then comes an email from Jordan Feucht of Appleton that demonstrated that, while we may have been seeing the same owl, it wasn’t alone.
Jordan worked security at the Oshkosh Truck building on State 96 near the airport where our owl frequently perched. Photos he shot with his smartphone show there was a male companion, nearly pure white in color.
A shot he took through a chain link fence gives the eerie impression of a snowy owl doing hard prison time.
He worked an 8 a.m to 4 p.m. shift in the guard shack and saw the owls every weekend for a month.
I explained that the black bar pattern on the owl identified it as a female. The pattern, which can vary substantially among individuals, and the close proximity of the sightings left me fairly confident we were seeing the same owl, a winter visitor for the arctic driven south by a short food supply.
Then comes an email from Jordan Feucht of Appleton that demonstrated that, while we may have been seeing the same owl, it wasn’t alone.
Jordan worked security at the Oshkosh Truck building on State 96 near the airport where our owl frequently perched. Photos he shot with his smartphone show there was a male companion, nearly pure white in color.
A shot he took through a chain link fence gives the eerie impression of a snowy owl doing hard prison time.
He worked an 8 a.m to 4 p.m. shift in the guard shack and saw the owls every weekend for a month.
He thinks he may have seen three snowy owls, though he never saw all three together.
He didn’t know anything about snowy owls or what a rare sight he was being treated to.
“I was kind of caught off guard when I first saw them a month and a half or two months ago,” he said.
The female, smaller and heavily marked with horizontal black bars, normally would sit on top of a lamp post and squawk, as if were calling for someone, he said. She would let him approach her perch seemingly without concern.
The larger, nearly all white male was silent. That one he hasn’t seen for a while.
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We went about a week without seeing the female, and then last Friday saw it perched on top of a utility pole next to the airport.
Wisconsin’s native owls are already nesting, so why isn’t this snowy winging its way back north?
Pat Fisher, a rehabilitator of injured birds who is watching three snowy owls at her home near New London, said the these owls have a different schedule in the arctic, where it is colder much later.
Steve Petznick, a naturalist at Mosquito Hill Nature Center near New London, said they nest in mid-May, when the lemmings are more visible for feeding to their young. The shortage of the small rodent is what drives them into our neighborhood.
It’s a hard trip for the snowy, but I’m not cheering for a quick comeback for the lemmings. I’d love to see the owls again next winter.
He didn’t know anything about snowy owls or what a rare sight he was being treated to.
“I was kind of caught off guard when I first saw them a month and a half or two months ago,” he said.
The female, smaller and heavily marked with horizontal black bars, normally would sit on top of a lamp post and squawk, as if were calling for someone, he said. She would let him approach her perch seemingly without concern.
The larger, nearly all white male was silent. That one he hasn’t seen for a while.
We went about a week without seeing the female, and then last Friday saw it perched on top of a utility pole next to the airport.
Wisconsin’s native owls are already nesting, so why isn’t this snowy winging its way back north?
Pat Fisher, a rehabilitator of injured birds who is watching three snowy owls at her home near New London, said the these owls have a different schedule in the arctic, where it is colder much later.
Steve Petznick, a naturalist at Mosquito Hill Nature Center near New London, said they nest in mid-May, when the lemmings are more visible for feeding to their young. The shortage of the small rodent is what drives them into our neighborhood.
It’s a hard trip for the snowy, but I’m not cheering for a quick comeback for the lemmings. I’d love to see the owls again next winter.
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