Unusual Winter Visitors!
Winter chugs along and according to most people we are all getting rained and snowed on like crazy. If it is like that down here then it is bound to be messy up north. Some of the larger storms we have been having sometimes push birds like a Snowy Owl to drop to the south to find their food, lemmings (ordinarily). Nevertheless, Snowies are opportunistic and will eat what is available. They hunt from a high perch and plunge into the snow to catch their food using only their auditory senses to locate the prey item.
Most of my Snowy experiences come from the Mission valley in Montana visiting Denver Holt's Owl Research Institute. He regularly gets 10-30 owls that winter in the valley each year. I also lived in Iowa and thus the birding can be slow in the winter, so I would drive around agricultural fields hoping to stumble across some. I almost always for encounter some during each winter.
A Snowy Owl is not too difficult to ID, but what about sex? Snowy Owls can be sexed using the amount of darker bars on the body, particularly the chest. Females are much darker and males appear white. The whiter the bird the older of a male it is. The bird above looks certain to be a male, but I could never be sure from just looking at the photo. We can also use the extent of the white bib on the birds meaning the larger the bib, the more likely a male. All of these things would need to be evaluated carefully with each bird. Notice the bird up top is clean white underneath!
This Snowy in the photo was photographed outside of Colorado Springs this week.
Most of my Snowy experiences come from the Mission valley in Montana visiting Denver Holt's Owl Research Institute. He regularly gets 10-30 owls that winter in the valley each year. I also lived in Iowa and thus the birding can be slow in the winter, so I would drive around agricultural fields hoping to stumble across some. I almost always for encounter some during each winter.
A Snowy Owl is not too difficult to ID, but what about sex? Snowy Owls can be sexed using the amount of darker bars on the body, particularly the chest. Females are much darker and males appear white. The whiter the bird the older of a male it is. The bird above looks certain to be a male, but I could never be sure from just looking at the photo. We can also use the extent of the white bib on the birds meaning the larger the bib, the more likely a male. All of these things would need to be evaluated carefully with each bird. Notice the bird up top is clean white underneath!
This Snowy in the photo was photographed outside of Colorado Springs this week.
Barrow's Goldeneye is an interesting bird that breeds in the Pacific Northwest including Idaho. I know there is one spot in Colorado they breed, but I am not sure where exactly. Furthermore, these birds winter in Colorado and can be found anywhere in the state during that time. This bird was photographed on the S. Platte River in Denver.
These are the kind of birds that are most sought after during the winter months. I am hoping to find a Barrow's Goldeneye near Fort Collins, but we will have to wait and see.
Both photos were taken by Nikon Birding ProStaff, Bill Schmoker. The Snowy was digiscoped with a 65mm EDG Fieldscope and Bill used a Nikon D2X and a 200-400 F4 Nikkor lens for the duck. Good birding to all! Hope you enjoyed this quick post.
1 comments:
I am a young birder that lives in northwest Iowa. I had some success last winter with Snowy Owls-I saw three within a short distance of Sioux City. I was lucky enough to see two of them in one day. On the way to look for a staked out Snowy Owl my mom and I stumbled across a gorgeous adult male and then went on to see the other one with success. I found one in Nebraska as well, the year before, on the way to see the state's second Band-tailed Pigeon! Snowy Owls sure do make birding in the winter in the midwest worth it.
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