Rare breed hopes rest on the wings of love
THEY say there is a special someone for everyone. But there is an ocean dividing two potential lovers who could make history should they ever meet.
Experts are hoping a female snowy owl recently spotted on Shetland will discover a male who has been waiting for a mate to appear on neighbouring Orkney for years.
If the pair were to get together, conservationists believe they could produce the first British snowy owl chicks in 40 years.
The male bird has been on the Orcadian island of Eday for more than three years, while the female turned up at Ronas Hill on Mainland, Shetland, at the beginning of the month.
Josh Jones of the BirdGuides publication said: ‘The chances of them finding each other are slim, but not out of the question at all. If they produce young there would be hundreds of birders wanting to see them.
‘The bird on Orkney has been around for quite a while and seems quite at home. Both birds have probably come from Canada, where there are bigger populations of their species, and possibly ended up on a container ship and hitched a lift. We are keeping an eye on the situation, hoping they meet up.’
The last breeding in the UK involved a pair that nested on Shetland island of Fetlar in 1967 and returned for the next eight years. They produced 21 young over the period. A second female joined the pair in 1974 and 1975. Although she laid eggs, none of them hatched.
In 1976, the male failed to return. The two females summered on Fetlar until 1993, but no further male joined them and no further breeding has occurred in Britain since.
The two potential lovebirds may be 170 miles apart, but Mr Jones said ‘that’s nothing for a bird that can fly 100 miles at night’.
In JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the boy wizard’s post is delivered by his pet snowy owl Hedwig.
The bird of prey is native to Arctic regions. At almost 2ft in height and with a wingspan of over five feet, the snowy is one of the largest owl species in Europe.