>
> Even the Bellingham Herald had a front page Snowy Owl story
> last night, entitled "Food shortage drives snowly owls south"
> and quoting a Donald Baepler of UNLV as saying "The majority
> of the snowy owls coming here won't survive and very few of
> those that do will ever return home, because most arrive in
> poor health and fall victim to predators."

I'd like anyone to send me any evidence they can locate to support this
last sentence.

What we really need are a lot of banded/marked Snowy Owls to see how much
truth there is in this idea. Capturing the owls would allow weighing them
(to see if they "arrive in poor health"), marking or radiotagging them
would allow us to follow their survival, and repeat capturing would allow
weighing over the winter to see how they fluctuate in weight. There have
been no such studies of Snowy Owls in this area, and it would be worthwhile
to do so to compare with data from the center of their winter range in
midcontinent and the northeast, where some studies have been done.

Also, wherever there are Snowy Owls, it would be interesting to search for
pellets to try to get a better handle on exactly what they're eating here.
I looked at 3 pellets from Leadbetter Point years ago, and the identifiable
bones included Horned Grebe, Sanderling, and Dunlin; no mammals.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
web site: http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html