Nature: Snowy owl makes a somewhat rare appearance at Alum Creek

 

Nature: Snowy owl makes a somewhat rare appearance at Alum Creek

Seeing a real live Hedwig – Harry Potter’s mail owl – in the flesh is always a thrill. Potter’s feathered postal carrier was a snowy owl, a magnificent bird that breeds in Arctic regions around the top of the globe.

People have been smitten with these huge white owls long before J.K. Rowling dreamt up Hedwig. Snowy owl cave art estimated to be 30,000 years old has been found in Europe. It’s not surprising that this magnificent bird of prey would draw ancient people’s attention.

Thirty millennia later, nothing has changed regarding human-owl fascination.

On Sunday, November 22, Beth Lenoble and Corrina Honscheid were birding along the dam at Alum Creek Reservoir in Delaware County. Suddenly, a ghost on wings appeared, headed their way. “Snowy owl!” they exclaimed.

Word went out over social media, and before long dozens of New Age cave painters converged on the site. Their owl art was to be done with cameras and pixels.

Should you find yourself in proximity to a snowy owl, please remember: the owl’s welfare always comes first. Excessive harassment can cause them to relocate, increasing the risk to the bird’s welfare. Remaining about a football field away is a good guideline. Because of their massive size, great views can be had with binoculars even from afar. My accompanying photo was made from several hundred feet away.

The big white owl developed a fixation with the rocky toe of the dam’s slope, resting atop boulders. Occasionally, to the delight of the assembled throng, it would take wing and drop into a nearby grassy field for a vole.

I and my camera joined the lineup a few days after the owl turned up. Probably over a hundred people came and went in the three hours I was present, and countless thousands of images were made.

Small wonder, their fixation. A snowy owl is spectacular. Females – which I believe this one was – can be two feet long, weigh five pounds, and have a five foot wingspan.

A massive pair of piercing yellow eyes is set in a flat face, and those golden orbs are the same size and weight as an adult human’s. Owls have a human-like appearance and I think this accounts for a good chunk of the outsized interest that people have with them.

Woe to the small rodent spotted by a snowy owl. Unless it’s fast, the owl will silently fly to it and seize the hapless mammal in gargantuan talons. The rodent will be ripped asunder and the pieces swallowed and digested. Indigestible remnants – fur and bone – will be cast into a hard pellet, which the owl will later regurgitate.

While rodents are staple prey items, the owls can kill much larger fare. Canada geese, great blue herons, and gulls have been observed being captured.

In an interesting bit of anatomy, owls have 14 neck vertebrae, double the number of humans. This allows an owl to rotate its head 270 degrees in either direction. In the accompanying photo, the protagonist of this story is looking 180 degrees backwards. Don’t try it.

Because of past research, we know that at least some snowy owls that visit Ohio originated in the Ungava Peninsula of northern Quebec, some 1,500 miles north of Columbus, Ohio. Virtually all of the owls that reach southerly latitudes such as ours are juveniles. Adults, especially males, typically remain in the Arctic.

About every four or five years, a snowy owl irruption occurs in the Midwest. Dozens or even hundreds of owls might appear in Ohio, and one might turn up anywhere. I recall seeing one some years ago atop a water tower near Sinclair Road and State Route 161.

These booms follow summers of major lemming outbreaks. The burly rodents are the owls’ major food source on the breeding grounds. Large numbers of owlets are successfully fledged, and many of them venture far south the following winter.

This is not an irruption winter, and few snowy owls have been noted in Ohio. That made the Alum Creek owl even more of a celebrity.

Probably, by the time this column appears, the owl will have moved on. But during its stay it awed thousands of people from far and wide.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.