Migrating snowy owls blanket parts of state
DETROIT – It’s December, and the snow is flying in the Upper Peninsula and other parts of Michigan. It’s also landing, feeding and getting its photo taken.
A large flock of migrating snowy owls, known as an irruption, has made its way into Michigan, with numbers unlike anything seen in some parts of the state in recent years.
“They’re all over here,” said Todd Keough, sales manager at Getz’s Department Store in Marquette.
An employee filmed a snowy owl hanging out by the sidewalk in downtown Marquette, just outside the store, on Wednesday, and the Facebook post of the video has others in the region posting photos of their close encounters with the birds.
Unlike most owls, which are active and hunting at night, snowy owls work the day shift, too. The light doesn’t bother them because at their summer home, in the Arctic regions in Canada’s and Alaska’s far north, the sun shines 24 hours a day.
“There was a major breeding event in northern Canada this year,” said Scott Weidensaul, co- director of the non-profit Project SNOWstorm, which uses scientific research to better understand the owls and also works with the public to conserve them.
That success was driven by a peak in the population cycle of snowy owls’ favorite food in their northern home, lemmings, a small rodent found on the tundra, he said. Every four years, on average, the lemming population swells, making snowy owl breeding and survival of young more prosperous. And then comes an irruption into places like Michigan, he said.
Snowy owls are rather odd migrants. They’ll stay a full Michigan winter if they feel there is sufficient food around, with no interest in heading farther south where things might be easier. Unlike, say, a robin, they don’t want to be where it’s warm. But sometimes they will be. This year’s irruption includes snowy owls seen as far south as North Carolina, Weidensaul said.
A snowy owl banded at an airport in Michigan a couple of years ago was next trapped by a researcher in North Dakota while migrating, and given a radio transmitter, he said. The bird went back up to the Arctic for the summer, then spent last winter in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, he said.