Snowy Owl Update! An Interview with Scott Weidensaul, Co-Founder of Project SNOWstorm
Project SNOWstorm, launched in 2013, has become one the world’s largest collaborative research project focasing on snowy owls. The volunteer organization is funded entirely by donations. This is “Amishtown” Image: Alan Richard photography from Project SNOWstorm Owls
Destination: WIldlife co-founder, Roberta Kravette
Scott Weidensaul, ornithologist, lecturer, field researcher, and author of more than thirty books (!), including many of the most important volumes on birds and avian migration, is also one of the nicest and most generous people I know. He is also the co-founder of many conservation and research missioned organizations, including Project SNOWstorm. Run entirely by volunteers, it has become one of the world’s premier snowy owl research projects.
Full Disclosure: Project SNOWstorm is one of my passions! No matter what I am doing, everything stops when a snowy owl update flashes across my screen!
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Recently, Scott and I talked about snowy owls and I thought you might be interested; this was our conversation. Note: All snowy owl images are from the Project SNOWstorm website.
Roberta: Unfortunately, so far this winter, Project SNOWstorm’s flash notices have been fewer than in the past. Seems we are not seeing many tagged snowy owls return this year. Why?
Meet “York” a juvenile male captured Dec. 6, 2017, at the Portland International Jetport by USDA Wildlife Services, and tagged by biologists with the Biodiversity Research Institute. He was electrocuted by a “poorly designed transformer” - one sad example of the man-made dangers facing snowy owls and other birds. Image: USFWS from Project SNOWstorm Owls
What are some of the possible reasons why we are not seeing the tagged snowy owls return this year?
Scott Weidensaul with snowy owl. Image by ©Chris DeSorbo
Scott Weidensaul: Snowy owl movements are unpredictable and somewhat cyclical, with the heaviest winter flights in the East and Midwest following summers where there was significant breeding activity in the Canadian Arctic. That, in turn, depends on peaks in local lemming populations. Some years, there are few or no lemming “booms” in the region, and thus very little snowy owl nesting activity. This is a normal part of the cycle, and appears to have been the case this summer, based on the limited reports we had from the Arctic. So there are far fewer young owls coming south than is normally the case. Again, this happens; we had a similar winter in 2010-11.
This autumn and early winter have also seen unusually warm weather across the Canadian Arctic in terms of its departure from average temperatures, and the extent of the warm-temperature anomaly. Snow cover is also very poor. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s kept adult snowy owls farther north than usual, and thus north of the cell network through which our transmitters send their data.
We are concerned about the degree to which highly pathogenic avian influenza is affecting snowy owls. We know a significant number of them have succumbed to HPAI in the past two years since the pandemic began in North America, likely because the owls prey on waterbirds that are a major reservoir for the disease. (Eagles have been hit hard, too, for the same reason.) We don’t know of any tagged owls that have died from HPAI, but some disappeared without explanation and we assume some may have been lost to the disease.
It is already January, may we still see some Project SNOWstrom tagged snowy owls this year?
There are some snowies being reported as far south as Delaware and Iowa, and if the weather up north turns snowier and colder we may certainly see a late push to the south. There was a flurry of new owl reports in the last weeks of December.
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What is the longest number of seasons Project SNOWstorm has been able to track a tagged owl?
Who was it?
“Wells” was first tagged at Maine’s Portland Jetport by The Biodiversity Research Institute, Project SNOWstorm colleagues. Image by ©Bri Benvenuti from Project SNOWstorm Owls
Scott Weidensaul: Our oldest veteran is Wells, who was tagged as an adult female in January 2017 in Maine, and returned each winter thereafter to Québec City, Québec. She was back there again last winter, although her transmitter was no longer as reliable as it once was. Interestingly, for as faithful as Wells is to her wintering site, she has wandered all over the North in the summer, some years breeding in northern Québec’s Ungava Peninsula, in others migrating thousands of kilometers to the northwest into the central Canadian Arctic. This kind of nomadic behavior is normal for snowies, which appear to be looking for places with high rodent populations.
Another old veteran is Otter, tagged as a three-year-old male in January 2019 in upstate New York. He tends to winter in southern Québec or the St. Lawrence River Valley. Unlike any of our other owls, his transmitter also communicates through the Argos satellite system from March through September, so we know that last April he migrated 4,600 km (2,858 miles) to spend the summer on Baffin Island in the central Canadian Arctic. Judging from his movements, though, it appears he did not have a nest this year. He was moving south in September but was still in the Arctic at that time.
Has a tagged snowy owl ever disappeared for a season and then reappeared?
“Otter,” first tagged by Tom McDonald in Jefferson County, NY.,”was the first snowy owl to be fitted with the a hybrid GSM (cellular) and Argos (satellite) transmitter, which allows us to monitor his movements year-round. His transmitter was paid for by generous donors to Project SNOWstorm.”. Image: ©Jean Apointe for Project SNOWstorm Owls
Scott Weidensaul Yes, Otter! The winter of 2020-21 he remained on the subarctic Torngat Peninsula of northern Labrador, never coming south into cell range until the following winter of 2021-22. It’s possible he may do the same this year, too.
“The climate in the Arctic is changing more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth. How is that affecting snowy owls?”]]
One big question for snowy owls is how climate change will affect the small mammals, especially lemmings, on which they depend — no lemmings, no successful breeding season. Lemmings need deep, fluffy, insulating snow in order to begin breeding during late winter, building to a summer peak. Warmer, wetter winters reduce that snow cover.
One of the world’s tiniest rodents, lemmings are found in and all around the Arctic circle. Fun Fact: These intrepid animals don’t hibernate in the Arctic winter! Image: ©Frank Fichtmueller
In some areas where such climate changes have occurred, like Arctic Scandinavia and parts of Greenland, the once-predictable, roughly four-year boom and bust lemming cycle has flat-lined, and snowy owls no longer breed regularly there. In other places, like Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic, the period between lemming peaks has lengthened from roughly four years to roughly every six or eight years, so owls are breeding there less frequently.
Ironically, climate change seems to be producing snowier, colder conditions in late winter and early spring in parts of the Canadian Arctic. That is a disaster for Arctic-nesting shorebirds and waterfowl, but excellent for lemmings, and thus theoretically for snowy owls.
How all of this fits into the long-term outlook for snowy owls is complicated. Project SNOWstorm just helped to underwrite the first-ever global conservation status assessment for snowy owls, headed by Dr. Rebecca McCabe working with our colleagues in the International Snowy Owl Working Group. Because that report is currently under peer review and revision for publication I can’t say much about the results at the moment, but it’s a big step forward in understanding where the main threats to snowy owls lie.
Straubel, Image by Tom Koch. “This juvenile female was trapped Feb. 21, 2018, at Green Bay-Austin Straubel International Airport by Frank Ujazdowski, tagged by Gene Jacobs of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and relocated for her safety to the Buena Vista grasslands of central Wisconsin. Her transmitter was underwritten by an anonymous donation to Fond du Lac Audubon Society.” from Project SNOWstorm Owls
Have you found snowy owl breeding grounds further north?
Scott Weidensaul: As part of that global status assessment, we combined our tracking data with that from colleagues around the world to identify all the areas in which snowy owls breed. For the most part, snowy owls are already breeding at the farthest-north areas that exist in their circumpolar range. They have no place farther north to go, which is obviously worrisome.
Now for Some Good News:
What are this year’s initial reports from Amherst and Wolf islands, traditional locations for Project SNOWstorm research,
Snowy Owls (can you find the second?) get ready for the hunt on Amherst Island, Lake Ontario, Canada. Image courtesy of Melissa Mance-Coniglio thanks to Project SNOWstorm
Scott Weidensaul: Snowies have been reported this winter from Wolfe Island in Lake Ontario, which along with neighboring Amherst Island tends to be an annual hotspot. While snowy sightings have been sparser than usual this winter, it’s been quite a good year for some other northern raptors like short-eared owls and rough-legged hawks
What are the 3 most important things learned about snowy owls through Project SNOWstorm’s tagging?
Meet “Colombia” an adult female “captured in January 2020 near Madison Audubon’s Goose Pond Sanctuary in Arlington, WI, with support from Madison Audubon. She migrated north in April, spending the summer of 2020 on Prince of Wales Island in the central Canadian Arctic before migrating south” Read more about Colombia Image by ©Rick Armstrong
Scott Weidensaul: It’s hard to narrow it down to three. In the past 10 years we’ve developed the world’s largest movement database for snowy owls, which has given us a host of insights into everything from their habitat choices during winter to whether behavior like long-distance wandering vs. local residency is connected to age or sex (it isn’t; they’re just very individualistic birds) to survival and mortality rates.
Among the most impactful aspects of our work has been analyzing the results of relocating more than 40 snowy owls from 13 airports in the U.S. and Canada to learn what methods — distance, direction, timing and release site habitat selection — have the greatest chance of preventing owls from returning to airfields where they may collide with planes or be killed or injured by jet blasts. In 2022 we published our findings in the Journal of Wildlife Management to help guide airport authorities and biologists trying to minimize owl-plane conflicts. And we’ll continue to refine our work on those questions.
Many snowy owls are captured at airports and relocated for their and human safety. This young lady, Alderbrook, was found at Montreal-Trudeau airport. Image: from © Project SNOWstorm Owls (photographer not note)
Although the tagging work gets most of the attention, Project SNOWstorm also has a major study looking at snowy owl health, disease and toxin contamination, working with salvaged dead snowy owls that are necropsied by our team of wildlife veterinarians. To date they and their colleagues have looked at more than 400 snowy owls, making it the largest such database in the world, and we are preparing a major publication based an analysis of those data by collaborators at Moncton University in New Brunswick.
Was there something that you learned from your PS research that surprised you?
Scott Weidensaul: Many things, like the extent to which snowy owls move far out onto ice on the Great Lakes (at least in winters when the lakes freeze up, as in 2013-14). There, they hunt for waterbirds in wind-created openings in the ice, much as we know some adult snowy owls that remain in the Arctic through the winter hunt sea ducks and alcids in permanent openings in the sea ice known as polynyas. In a way, young owls on the Great Lakes may be practicing for a more challenging lifestyle as adults in the depths of the Arctic winter.
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What are your hopes for Project SNOWstorm’s future?
Scott Weidensaul: We’ll continue to focus on several ongoing studies, including testing some of our conclusions about the best practices for relocating airport owls. We’re hoping that our huge tracking database may allow us to model snowy owl movements and perhaps predict where the next big lemming boom and breeding event will take place. And now that Covid-19 is less of an imminent menace, and travel in the Arctic is less restrictive, we hope to continue a study we piloted in 2019 deploying tiny satellite transmitters on fledgling snowy owls when they leave the nest. We know almost nothing about survival rates and dispersal movements of snowies during that critical time in their young lives, but the evidence suggests they have a high mortality rate in their first weeks and months. We just need a good breeding season in places like Bylot Island where we have colleagues that maintain long-term study sites.
Roberta: Thanks so much, Scott. I've enjoyed our conversation and learned a lot!
“Seneca’s” release.. Image by ©Aaron Winters from © Project SNOWstorm Owls “Seneca is an adult male in at least his fifth calendar year, tagged Feb. 22, 2019, by Tom McDonald in Seneca Township, NY. He is the second owl, after Otter, fitted with a hybrid GSM (cellular) and Argos (satellite) transmitter, which will allow us to monitor his movements year-round. His transmitter was paid for by generous donors to Project SNOWstorm” from Project SNOWstorm