Over the past couple months Snowy Owls have been extremely hard to find in the Saskatoon area. The last one I've banded was back in December. I decided to head out west and search around for whatever I could find, the weather was ideal with bright sunny skies and a light breeze, the temperature was sitting at -30C.
I found 4 Snowies in total, caught 3 of them and a Prairie Falcon. This is the best luck i've ever had in a single day. I've caught 2 SNOWs in a day a few times but never 3. All owls were adult females. Since joining the SNOWY OWL Working Group my views have changed and data has been brought forward to disprove facts that bilogists once thought were true.
One of these theories was that ornithologists and birders could look at a Snowy Owl and tell what age the bird was. This is not at all true when it comes to dark individuals. We thought that darker birds were indeed young birds from the summer's breeding season. We have proven this to not be true. We have caught birds that were black in color and they have been adult females.The vast majority of Snowy Owls turn lighter in color but they can also turn darker in color both male and female. It is something we keep track of as we band more and more birds, we photograph and record molt patterns to see how much they change throughout their lifetime.
No comments:
Post a Comment