Winter Woes

Snowy Owls began arriving since my last post, at the start of their arrival I was having difficulties catching them and I'm not sure if it was in part to minimal snow cover. To date I'm at 22 banded and 24 caught. I found two emaciated Snowies that later died. With the amount of snow we have around Peace Region it's no wonder why these owls are starving. I've only caught two older birds and the other 20 have been HY (hatch year) birds.

Regular boreal dwelling owls are scarce this winter, I thought after having such a great winter catching hawk owls last winter that maybe this was the "NORM" in Peace Region, I guessed wrong! I've only caught 3 Hawkowls and a single Great Gray. This is my first Great Gray a month shy of two years since my last.

After a month with my Swedish Goshawk Trap up and running finally the first bird of the season, a SY (second year) male Northern Goshawk.