“Snowy Owl, Otherworldly and Ancient”

This regal owl rose to fame in film and is one of the few birds that can even get ‘non-birders’ to come for a look. Male Snowy Owls are darker and more marked when younger but become mostly white as adults. Adult females retain their dark markings. All Snowy Owls have catlike yellow eyes. Harry Potter’s Hedwig was, in fact, played by a male Snowy Owl! While Great Gray owls are the tallest, Snowy Owls are the heaviest North American owls and have been represented in European cave paintings. 

Whether the tundra or the Great Plains, an airport field or beach dunes, Snowy Owls like treeless places and wide-open spaces. Because they often sit right on the ground to hunt, they prefer rolling terrain where they can find a vantage to survey the surrounding area. On their wintering grounds, they’ll also perch atop a fencepost, hay bale, building, telephone pole, grain elevator—anywhere with a good view. At their latitudes, Snowy Owls hunt in nearly 24-hour daylight, and their thick plumage keeps them cozy. 

Snowy Owls mainly eat small mammals, particularly lemmings, which, at times on the tundra, may be all these birds eat. Sometimes, they’ll switch to ptarmigan and waterfowl. How many young they raise each year depends on the lemming population. If it’s a booming lemming year, they may raise double or triple the number of young! Males will also place hunted lemmings around the entire nest for the female and young to eat. Snowy owls nest on the ground in a depression the female creates. They usually reuse the nest for many years.

On their breeding grounds, male Snowy Owls execute a fascinating mating display. First, the male rises into the air with exaggerated wingbeats in an undulating flight, holding a lemming in his bill or talons. Then he descends to the ground with wings flapping, drops the prey on the ground, stands erect, lowers his head, and fans his tail as the female approaches. 

Snowy Owls nest in remote areas, have huge territories, and in winter, their migrations are widespread and unpredictable, so it’s very difficult to estimate their population size. Having determined that Snowy Owls lost 64% of their population from 1976-2016, Partners in Flight includes Snowy Owls on their Yellow Watch List for species that will require constant care and long-term assessment to prevent further declines. Like all raptors, Snowy Owls are protected from trapping and shooting, and this may protect them during winters in populated areas. Their remote breeding grounds in the High Arctic are largely free from direct human disturbance, although it’s not clear how climate change will affect them. The Snowy Owl population probably rises and falls with the population cycles of its prey.

Sources: Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Original mixed media on raw stretched canvas with hard maple float frame.

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