Are any of you northern US guys still seeing snowy owls? I saw one today maybe 45 miles north of Minneapolis, seems awfully late for them to be here yet but maybe I am wrong?
Still frozen up here easy hunting for them with muskrats in rut down there
Sure could be. I just don’t recall seeing them this far into spring down here but I’m no authority. The guys west of here in Dakota seem to see more of them so I thought I’d ask. The one I saw today was the smallest I’ve ever seen.
I usually only see one or two each year, but I don't look too hard for them either. If they are still around, they must be gorging themselves on all the 13-stripe ground squirrels running across the snow banks in the ditches in the afternoons!
Fairly common here in the winter, see 20-25 most winters. Haven’t seen one now for over a month, think they all headed north.
Thanks guys. I notice them of course when they show up in the late fall and winter but yesterday seeing that one still here got me thinking I’d never kept track, what track I could, of when they departed.
They show up here ("here" being the northern Lower Peninsula) about any time after November 1st, and a guy can usually find them on into mid March no problem. There are stragglers nearly every year that seem to linger on past spring. It seems that summer before last there were some Snowys here all through the summer. Now THAT is odd. I personally have never seen any past March, or before late November/early December, but I know folks that have.
I’ve read that most snowy owls don’t breed until they are 2 years away old, good chance that any stragglers that haven’t headed north are young birds that don’t have the urge to hurry up and get north to find a mate.
Are any of you northern US guys still seeing snowy owls? I saw one today maybe 45 miles north of Minneapolis, seems awfully late for them to be here yet but maybe I am wrong?
Osky
45 miles north of the cities? I don't know who was more lost, you or the bird lol.