A surprise Snowy Owl appears in the mountains of Gwynedd

Bird Notes columnist Julian Hughes of RSPB Cymru reveals what birds have been spotted in the past week and lists eight upcoming birding events

By

Andrew Forgrave Rural Affairs Editor

23:24, 8 OCT 2018

NEWS

Walkers in the Rhinogydd, the mountains above Llyn Trawsfynydd , photographed a Snowy Owl at the weekend – a remarkable sight!

One was reported from Cwmystradllyn in late July, just eight miles to the northwest, and this huge predator could easily have survived here for several months.

Could it be the same female Snowy Owl that was seen near Amlwch in June , and then reported at RSPB South Stack in early July?

I haven’t spotted any Swallows for a couple of weeks, but a reader reports that a pair are still feeding young at the half-way tram station on the Great Orme .

While House Martins sometimes have broods into October, it’s rare for Swallows, and the chicks will need good fortune to make it to Africa.

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Endangered plovers face new threat: snowy owls

By NAINA RAO • JUN 26, 2018

The Environment Report

A new predator has emerged for a little shorebird in our region, the piping plover.

Snowy owls often spend time out on Great Lakes beaches in the winter. It’s a good habitat for them. But something unexpected happened this year.

Vince Cavalieri is the piping plover coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It became very apparent early this year that there were a lot of snowy owls still being seen,” he says.

He says the owls hung around later than usual.

“This is the first time I’ve seen snowy owls this late into the season in these kinds of numbers and also it’s the first time we know that piping plovers were predated by snowy owls,” says Cavalieri.

This is a problem because piping plovers are an endangered species. There are fewer than 80 nesting pairs in the Great Lakes region.

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Rare Harry Potter owl spotted in North Wales for only the fourth time in history

Bird Notes columnist Julian Hughes of RSPB Conwy reveals how the Snowy Owl got twitchers in a flap, and outlines 11 birding events in the coming days

Andrew Forgrave Rural Affairs Editor

11:02, 19 JUN 2018

UPDATED11:39, 19 JUN 2018

ANGLESEY'S FIRST SNOWY OWL IN ALMOST HALF-A-CENTURY

Early June can be an excellent time for rare birds, Anglesey’s most memorable being a Black Lark at RSPB South Stack in 2003 that brought thousands of birders from across the UK to see a bird hardly ever witnessed in western Europe.

Last week’s twitch to Amlwch was not on the same scale, but the sight of a Snowy Owl on the Anglesey coastal path will live long in the memory of those fortunate to see it.

Reported by walkers over several days, it proved a one-Friday wonder for birders with no sign since.

This same female was in Pembrokeshire in late May; readers may recall that one was also reported from Holy Island in late March .

Snowy Owls found in Britain usually originate from Arctic Canada, some undoubtedly hitching a ride on trans-Atlantic freighters.

More than a dozen appeared in Britain last winter but this is only the fourth ever seen in North Wales, and the last on Anglesey was in 1972, so it drew a keen crowd from as far away as the English Midlands.

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‘The Lincolnshire Hedwig’ – rare sighting of snowy owl near Boston

The snowy owl spotted at Wainfleet Marsh in March, believed now to have been seen at RSPB Frampton Marsh.

DAVID SEYMOUR Email Published: 11:30 Wednesday 02 May 2018

A rare sighting of a snowy owl in Lincolnshire has been made at a nature reserve near Boston. The arctic bird has been spotted at RSPB Frampton Marsh. It is suspected to be the same snowy owl seen at Wainfleet Marsh in March. That sighting was the first for the county since the early ‘90s. Before that, you had to go back to 1869 for another sighting – and that was just an unconfirmed report. Make sure your children have online know-how Take a look at our top tips to help your children spot the warning signs when something isn’t right online. Sponsored by Internet Matters It prompted hundreds of people to turn out for their chance to see the bird. Bird-watchers have been sharing images of the snowy owl, appropriately enough, on Twitter.

Read more at: 

Bird watchers flock to Snettisham as snowy owl makes ‘extremely rare’ visit to Norfolk

Luke Powell

PUBLISHED: 17:14 11 March 2018 | UPDATED: 08:29 12 March 2018

A snowy owl has made an “extremely rare” visit to Norfolk this weekend - thousands of miles away from its usual feeding ground.

A snowy owl made an “extremely rare” visit to Norfolk over the weekend - thousands of miles away from its usual feeding ground.

The birds usually live in the far north around the Arctic circle and rarely venture south of northern Scotland.

But the RSPB has today confirmed a female snowy owl - made famous as Harry Potter’s owl, Hedwig - has been spotted at Snettisham in West Norfolk.

The charity said hundreds of bird watchers gathered at the reserve, as well as at Titchwell Marsh to catch a glimpse.

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Snowy Owl sighing - via Richard Muirhead

Arctic ookpik boom sees many snowy owls head south this winter

"Snowies" have been seen in south-central United States

JANE GEORGE

Snowy owls have become the new Canadian “snow birds” this winter, migrating south of the border in great numbers, and some of the birds, called ookpiks in Inuktitut, have gone as far south as the state of Missouri where their presence on power poles, hay bales and fences has attracted a lot of attention.

In Missouri—more than 3,800 kilometres south of north Baffin, where many snowy owls nest and breed—the big owls, which can weigh up to more than six pounds and have a wingspan of nearly five feet, find a varied diet: they may eat rabbits, squirrels and other rodents, mink and muskrats, and waterfowl and other birds, which they find “usually by sitting on a fence post or from other vantage point and looking and listening for prey,” the Missouri Department of Conservation said in a recent update on snowy owls.

Read more  

'Worrying alarm call' for world's birds on brink of extinction

By Helen Briggs

BBC News

12 December 2017

Overfishing and changing sea temperatures are pushing seabirds to the brink of extinction, according to new data on the world's birds.

Birds that are now globally threatened include the kittiwake and the Atlantic puffin, which breed on UK sea cliffs.

Meanwhile, on land, the Snowy Owl is struggling to find prey as ice melts in the North American Arctic, say conservation groups.

The iconic bird is listed as vulnerable to extinction for the first time.

"Birds are well-studied and great indicators of the health of the wider environment,'' said Dr Ian Burfield, global science coordinator at BirdLife International, the IUCN Red List authority on birds.

''A species at higher risk of extinction is a worrying alarm call that action needs to be taken now. ''

He added that success in kiwi and pelican conservation had shown that, when well-resourced and supported, conservation efforts do pay off.

Worldwide, over a quarter of more than 200 bird species reassessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature have been moved to higher threat categories while a similar number have been downgraded.

Read on 

Snowy Owls Coming South For Food, Say Experts

Arctic owls in New Jersey

Arctic-dwelling snowy owls are turning up in unusually large numbers in the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge in Galloway Township, N.J. this year. The large owl species ordinarily do not migrate this far south....

Some people as far south as Tenessee might be surprised to see an unusual bird in their backyards this spring. Great Snowy Owls have been spotted this year in some very extraordinary places, thanks to what experts are saying is a perfectly normal occurrence in nature, according to CBS.

There has been an especially wild influx of the beautiful creatures in New Jersey. They have been attracting large crowds to the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge in Galloway Township just outside Atlantic City.

“It’s certainly a special big year for snowy owls,” Donald Freiday with the US Fish and Wildlife Service said of the phenomena. “We think that the reason there are so many snowy owls in New Jersey… is because they had a really good year this year up in the Arctic where they breed. And when that happens, they produce lots of offspring. There’s competition for food among them and they come south as a result.”

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Trapping And Tracking The Mysterious Snowy Owl

Posted: March 11, 2014

This winter's unexpected arctic bird invasion has given owl researchers a rare opportunity. They're fitting a few of the errant owls with GPS backpacks to track their return to the Arctic.

This is Hungerford, a large female snowy owl. Last summer she was just a hatchling — a gray ball of fuzz in the middle of the Arctic tundra. In the fall, newly equipped with adult plumage, she flew thousands of miles south until she reached the coast of Maryland. And this winter, she became an important part of an unprecedented research project.

'Something Huge Is Going On'

Snowy owls are among the largest birds in North America, but scientists know very little about their behavior. The owls spend most of their days far from humans, hunting rodents and birds in the flat expanses of the Arctic Circle. In the winter, the owls move south, but they don't usually reach the United States. Most years, only a few are spotted in the northernmost states — a rare treat for birders. But this winter was different.

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Snowy owl spotted in Cairngorms

A rare sighting of a snowy owl has been made in the Cairngorms.

The birds of prey are native to Arctic regions, including parts of Norway and North America.

The snowy owl in the Cairngorms was seen on 18 February and reported on the nature website iSpot earlier on Tuesday.

RSPB Scotland said that to see snowy owls in Scotland was rare. The last pair of snowy owls to breed in the UK was on Shetland in 1975.

female

A spokesman said: "I believe that over the years snowy owls have been seen occasionally in the Cairngorms during the summer months.

"It is unusual to see one high up on the plateau during winter as there would be relatively little food for them - particularly up around Ben Macdui."

He added: "Spotting a white bird like a snowy owl in such a extensive snowy landscape would be a quite a challenge."

In 2011, a male snowy owl appeared on the Western Isles for the eighth year running in a search for a mate.

Male

The large white owl first visited the islands in 2003 and had previously flown around North Uist, Lewis, Harris and St Kilda.

In 2008, birdwatchers' hopes of snowy owls breeding in the UK for first time in more than 30 years were raised when the bird was joined by a female.

However, the pair were later spotted 50 miles apart.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-21589828

Rare snowy owl faces difficult recovery

Seeing a rare bird isn't always a feather in a birdwatcher's cap.

Denise Lewis of Bellevue has seen two snowy owls — an Arctic bird with radiant white plumage — in Nebraska this month. She hopes that they are the last.

Lewis, outreach coordinator for Raptor Recovery Nebraska, retrieved an ailing, female snowy owl from the grounds of the Hilton Omaha downtown at midday Monday. The raptor is believed to be the same bird that perched on the back side of the CenturyLink Center Omaha, thrilling dozens of attendees during a regional dog show Friday.

Lewis said the owl was severely emaciated and dehydrated.

“She's in such bad shape that I can't feed her,” Lewis said. “She's full of parasites, mites and flies.”

Lewis said she would try to nurse the bird back to strength with electrolytes and vitamins for a few days before attempting to offer it solid food. If it survives, Lewis planned to take the owl to Raptor Recovery's center near Lincoln later this week.

Read on:  http://www.omaha.com/article/20121119/NEWS/711199918/1707