ANGELJEAN CHIARAMIDA, The Daily News of Newburyport
NEWBURYPORT (AP) — Their eyes can mesmerize and their dark-tipped white feathers make snowy owls one of the most strikingly beautiful birds around. And for the fourth year in a row, they’ve arrived for a winter visit to greater Newburyport’s beaches and salt marshes, migrating from their breeding grounds in the frozen tundra.
What was first thought to be a one-year aberration has become a pattern. Local bird experts say it appears that snowy owls — natives of the Arctic — have extended their habitat to this region and to areas farther south.
“We have notice of sightings about two weeks ago of snowy owls coming through on Hampton Beach and at the Salisbury Beach (State) Reservation,” said Denise Lacroix of Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.
In past years, Plum Island too has been a favorite spot for the bird, she said.
“There’s usually a lot on Plum Island,” she said. “They seem to like sitting on the pink house there.”
Weighing in at from 3 1/2 to 6 1/2 pounds, the snowy owl is the largest owl in North America, according to the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Twenty to 28 inches in length with a wingspan that can be more than 5 feet, Audubon describes snowy owls as “equal parts graceful beauty and efficient predator.”
In this species, females are larger than males, according to David Larson of Newburyport’s Audubon Society’s Joppa Flats Educational Center.
“That’s the reason why they tend the nests,” Larson said. “The female snowy owl is tough and can repel all the predators, while the wimpy males are only good for going out and hunting for lemmings.”
Don’t let their beauty fool you, Larson said. Snowy owls are fierce predators, able to take on species larger than they are, like blue herons, and at Logan Airport one year, a pesky gyrfalcon, the largest of the falcon species.
“This gyrfalcon was harassing the snowy owl and one day she grabbed the gyrfalcon right in mid-air,” Larson said. “They crashed to the ground together, and when the gyrfalcon was able to break free and take off, the snowy owl chased him all the way to Deer Island.”
Larson said today, the more wildlife experts learn of snowy owls, the more they realize that what they believed about the bird previously just isn’t so.
“Three years ago there was a huge migration of snowy owls everywhere in the eastern United States, even down to Florida, and we didn’t think we’d see anything like that again,” he said. “Then the next year was OK, and last year was pretty darn good. And this year, they’re arriving again.”
When the birds arrived three years ago, experts thought they’d come because they were starving up north, he said, but that wasn’t true either.
“The birds were in fine shape,” he said. “Their migration appears to have a lot to do with having a really good breeding year with too many young for the food supply where they were. So they’ve spread out to find a good supply of food.”
Snowy owls’ food of choice in the cold Arctic regions of the planet is the small rodent found in the tundra known as a lemming, he said.
“But we don’t have lemmings here,” he said. “We’ve found that much of the snowy owls’ diet around here seems to be tending toward ducks.”
A lot of the birds have developed a regular hunting pattern, he said. During the day, they hang around beaches and wetlands and watch, then at night swoop in, grab a duck and bring it back to shore for their meal.
They do like it cold, he said, so they’ll only be around until about April, then head back up north. But they don’t necessarily breed in the same spot every year, Larson said. Although the Arctic tundra is well known in North America as a prime breeding area for snowy owls, if the birds don’t think there’s sufficient food to feed their offspring any given year, they might head over to Siberia to nest, he said.
Those unfamiliar with the species who’d like to observe them this year should note it’s wise to keep their distance.
“You don’t want to harass them,” Larson said. “The best way to find them is to go to Parker River Refuge or Salisbury Beach or Plum Island and look for a whole lot of cars parked all over. That means there’s probably a bunch of photographers taking pictures of snowy owls.”
