The Snowy Owl

The Snowy Owl

 

Flaying Animal | The Snowy Owl | The ghostlike snowy owl has unmistakable white plumage that echoes its Arctic origins. The Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) is a large owl of the typical owl family Strigidae. The Snowy Owl was first classified in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who developed binomial nomenclature to classify and organize plants and animals. The bird is also known in North America as the Arctic Owl, Great White Owl or Harfang.

Identification:
Height: Up to 27 in. - it is one of the biggest owls.
Wingspan: 45-60 in.

Color: In the summer, snowy owls are brownish with dark spots and stripes. In the winter, they are completely white.

The Snowy Owl

Distinguishing Characteristics
All white color, ability to hunt silently, hunts during the day unlike most owls.

The Snowy Owl

Breeding
8-10 eggs, eggs are laid on the ground or on hummocks because there aren't trees in the Arctic.

The Snowy Owl

Habitat

The Snowy Owl is a bird of Arctic tundra or open grasslands and fields. They rarely venture into forested areas. During southward movements they appear along lakeshores, marine coastlines, marshes, and even roost on buildings in cities and towns. In the Arctic, they normally roost on pingaluks (rises in the tundra) and breed from low valley floors up to mountain slopes and plateaus over 1,000 meters (3,000 feet) in elevation. When wintering in the Arctic, they frequent wind-swept tundra with little snow or ice accumulation. At more southern latitudes they typically frequents agricultural areas.

The Snowy Owl

Range

Snowy Owls nest in the Arctic tundra of the northermost stretches of Alaska, Canada and Eurasia. They winter south through Canada and northern Eurasia, with irruptions occurring further south in some years. Snowy Owls are attracted to open areas like coastal dunes and prairies that appear somewhat similar to tundra. They have been reported as far south as Texas, Georgia, the American Gulf states, southern Russia, northern China and even the Caribbean. Between 1967 and 1975, Snowy Owls bred on the remote island of Fetlar in the Shetland Isles north of Scotland, UK. Females summered as recently as 1993, but their status in the British Isles is now that of a rare winter visitor to Shetland, the Outer Hebrides and the Cairngorms. In January 2009, a Snowy Owl appeared in Spring Hill, Tennessee, the first reported sighting in the state since 1987.

The Snowy Owl

Natural Threats

Though Snowy Owls have few predators, the adults are very watchful and are equipped to defend against any kind of threat towards them or their offspring. During the nesting season, the owls regularly defend their nests against arctic foxes, corvids and swift-flying jaegers; as well as dogs, gray wolves and other avian predators. Males defend the nest by standing guard nearby while the female incubates the eggs and broods the young. Both sexes attack approaching predators, dive-bombing them and engaging in distraction displays to draw the predator away from a nest. They also compete directly for lemmings and other prey with several predators, including rough-legged hawks, golden eagles, peregrine falcons, gyrfalcons, jaegers, glaucous gulls, short-eared owls, great horned owls, common ravens, wolves, arctic foxes, and ermine. Some species nesting near snowy owl nests, such as the snow goose, seem to benefit from the protection of snowy owls that drive competing predators out of the area.

The Snowy Owl

Favorite Food

Owls live mostly off lemmings. If there are a lot of lemmings the owl population increases. But if the lemming population is down during the winter the owls leave the Arctic are in search of food. Some people think that the owls die if there is only a little food but really a lot of them fly south searching for food. They come back when the food becomes more abundant.

Voice
The Snowy Owl is virtually silent during nonbreeding seasons. The typical call of the male is a loud, harsh, grating bark, while the female has a similar higher pitched call. During the breeding season males have a loud, booming "hoo, hoo" given as a territorial advertisement or mating call. Females rarely hoot. Its attack call is a guttural "krufff-guh-guh-guk". When excited it may emit a loud "hooo-uh, hooo-uh, hooo-uh, wuh-wuh-wuh". Other sounds are dog-like barks, rattling cackles, shrieks, hissing, and bill-snapping. Nestlings "cheep" up to 2 weeks of age, then hiss and squeal.

The Snowy Owl

These magnificent owls sometimes remain year-round in their northern breeding grounds, but they are frequent migrants to Canada, the northern United States, Europe, and Asia. Lemming availability may determine the extent of southern migration, when owls take up summer residence on open fields, marshes, and beaches.