Snowy Owl Invasion

Snowy Owls lead nomadic lives and travel vast distances from year to year searching for productive feeding areas. Some years, most recently in the winter of 2011/2012, conditions cause them to come south in great numbers.

Get an intimate look at these white owls from the north through video and photographs captured by the Cornell Lab's, Gerrit Vyn.

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Closed Caption:

They appear from nowhere,
stoic sentinels in fields, farmlands,
and shorelines.
For a time they become part of the
landscape,
but soon they will be gone.
Each of these great nomads is on a lifelong journey,
spanning continents in search of food.
Individual owls have been tracked moving from Alaska
to the Canadian Arctic to Russia
over the course of just a couple years.
Some wander the pack ice, hundreds of miles
from land where they feed in Arctic darkness on seabirds.
And in some winters, many of them come south.
These owls are on the coast of Washington.
A summer of lemming abundance in the
Arctic produced lots of young owls and
competition for food further north may
have pushed them here.
Wet plumage in the early morning on the
feet and under the tail
reveals they're not only preying
on voles and rats
but also on shorebirds and waterfowl snatched
from the water with their hooked talons.
For most of the day they roost motionless to
conserve energy.
But they often break their
stillness to preen,
revealing the depth of the insulated
plumage
that allows them to endure the bitter cold
wind of the usual Arctic environment.
Feathers even cover their powerful
feet and toes
and surround their beak.
This dense plumage makes them seem much larger
than they actually are.
Their heads are scarcely more than two incredibly
sensitive eyes and ears with a brain.
in-between and a raptor’s beak and gullet.
The unpredictability of Snowy Owl behavior and
movements is part of their allure.
When one of these Arctic wanderers comes south
to reside briefly in a farmer’s field,
we get to glimpse a moment in a long
food-driven journey
that we as humans can hardly imagine.