Notes from an Environmentalist.

Will there be an Irruption of Snowy Owls this year?

If you can see a Snowy Owl yawning it is warning sign that you are too close! Stay at least a 100 yards away.

            Will this be a Good Year for Snowies?

                              “Prognostication is very difficult,

                                  especially about the future.”

                                                Niels Bohr

                                         Nobel Laureate 1922

To have an irruption of snowy owls down into the lower 48 states you have to have several things happen in synchrony.

First you have to have a good crop of lichen so lemmings will have large litters. This will cause snowy owls to lay more eggs, up to sixteen eggs in year with a lot of lemmings, none in a year without lemmings.

So, then you will have a lot hungry juvenile snowy owls that the older male owls chase out of the arctic territories so the juveniles irrupt into the lower 48 states sometimes as far afield as Florida or once even to Bermuda.

However, climate change appears to be altering those conditions in ways we don’t fully understand. It could be making the Arctic too warm for lichens to thrive. It could also be altering the consistency of snow so it won’t hold up the lemmings subnivean tunnels, making them easier for the Snowies to find.

Once the young Snowies arrive it is easy to see that some birds are more adept at hunting and establishing feeding territories. The most successful birds are usually the larger females that can establish and hold feeding territories on high dunes overlooking the ocean. There they will be relatively unmolested by humans and have steady diet of plump offshore diving ducks.  

The smaller males end up in fields subsisting on a meager diet of voles. Unlike most owls Snowies are daytime hunters, so they are constantly being interrupted by a bevy of photographers eager to get hits on their Facebook pages.

So, in the Spring when the Snowies return to the Arctic to nest, it is more often the males than the females that are underweight.  

So, let’s give Snowies a break. We’re not doing much to slow global warming, the least we can do is give Snowies some room when they come down to our shores for the winter, as apparently they already have.

There have been some sightings on Plum Island and in Hampton and Salisbury but this could of a single bird searching for a suitable feeding territory. Please give he, she, or them room so they can find it.