Snowy Owl sightings continue up and down the northeast coast with many sightings on Cape Cod and the Islands. The recent online postings made on the Mass Audubon Bird Sightings list for the Cape show a Snowy Owl sighting in Truro as part of the Christmas Bird Count and another at South Cape Beach in Mashpee. Thanks to the Cape Cod Bird Club online postings many of us were alerted to the Snowy Owl in the dunes at South Cape Beach State Park in Mashpee which is a component of the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve . With camera and binocs in hand, I trudged out through the dunes in search of the Snowy. A nice young couple with two young children in tow was making their way back to the parking lot. The husband pointed out that the Snowy was just ahead in the dunes about 125 yards. BINGO! It was very exciting!!
According to a fascinating recent article posted online from an upstate New York daily newspaper, veteran Snowy Owl researcher, Tom McDonald, suggests that an overabundance of food source has pushed out early
first year male Snowy owls and we should expect a second wave of later stage juvenile males and females in late January! Feel free to keep up on all related Owl news alerts with this terrific online resource on owling info on the Owl Pages site.
Thanks to a Dec. 31 posting on the Mass Birding List, a link was provided to an online article in Science Daily that explores fascinating new discoveries about the behavior and long distance travels of Snowy Owls based on satellite tracking. The article indicates that "wildlife satellite studies could lead to radical re-thinking about how the snowy owl fits into the Northern ecosystems.”
Vern Laux contributes a regular Saturday birding column for the Cape Cod Times. One of his recent articles mentioned Snowy Owls on Nantucket as part of the annual Christmas Bird Count. Click here for more data on the national Christmas Bird Count. Vern provides a detailed recap of the recent Cape and Islands annual bird count numbers and the many bird species identified in the CBC . He mentions that 4 Snowy Owls were found on Nantucket and 7 Snowy Owls were located on the Cape, including one out on Sandy Neck in Barnstable. Vern noted the unusual Snowy Owl incursion in an online Nantucket Independent column. In that piece he stated that “Snowy Owls, which spend most of their time on the Arctic tundra, hunt during the day rather than at night when their nocturnal cousins do, making them highly visible for birders.”
We’ll keep an eye out for more Snowy Owl updates and report back soon. Don’t forget that Mass Audubon is promoting the “Focus on Feeders” weekend in early February and all are encouraged to participate. Easy and fun!
Click for more Snowy Owl images (select Dec 28, Dec 29, and Dec 30).
Craig Gibson
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