Hi Tweets,

Laurinda Anglin writes:

>Heard from someone I work with that "more than one" Snowy Owls were seen
>sitting on fence posts at the Samish flats west 90 last weekend. Has anyone
>else heard anything about any Snowys in the area?

Can't speak to that directly, but will pass on a note from Peter Whelan's
last Saturday 'Birds' column from the Globe & Mail where he mentions that
the populations of many northern prey species are at their peaks this
winter. In winters past where this has been the case, the adults stay much
further north and the proportion of first-year and adolescent birds
dispersing to these latitudes is correspondingly much higher. Peter suggests
that because the amount of available prey is much higher than usual, the
number of young tundra- and boreal forest-species birds at southern
latitudes this winter might be lower than usual as well this year

I'd like to propose again that a once-monthly count be done in their normal
areas between mid-November, when southbound birds usually appear, and the
end of April, by which time the survivors have usually departed for the
Arctic, and the results plotted to show how many use which ares when. This
would give us a picture of how many actually transit and stay. If this could
be done over ten years, say, it would give us a very clear pattern of
migration, dispersal, migration routes, population cycles, and if aging the
birds were possible (as a quick 'n dirty: as with gulls, palest birds are
adults, most heavily marked are young), we could see if age-sorting occurs
at various staging areas, or at different times in the winter, patterns of
young or adult movements, whether they migrate in either direction together
or apart, all sorts of things.

This would be a heckuva lot easier than studying shorebirds or waterfowl,
because the numbers are relatively small (less than 20, usually, excepting
the Boundary Bay roost site near 64th Street where there was close to
70--seventy--one year) the owls are conspicuous, prefer particular types of
habitat, and, once you've identified the day-roost sites, easy to relocate.

Why do this? Just to find out and know something interesting we don't know now.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net

"She's psychic....we've decided to find it charming."
--Frasier