Snowy Eye

image

This is a captured bird…but not a captive bird. The wildlife biologist at Logan Airport in Boston has captured over 140 Snowy Owls on the airport this winter. This shatters the previous record of 80 birds, and simply overpowers the 6-8 caught in a normal year. Almost daily he makes the drive north to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, near Newberryport, to release one or more Owls into the wild. On weekends the releases are public, and public relations, events. Yesterday a crowd of perhaps 150 people of all ages had gathered at 1PM for the arrival and release of the Owl. We were treated to a very informative talk on Snowy Owls in general, and invasion years like this one in particular. And then he got the Owl out of its crate, and proceeded to walk around with the Owl on his fist, still telling us the story of Snowy Owls, around and around the inner circumference of our circle, often less that a foot from the rapt faces of the crowd. The Owl took all this attention in stride, posturing and posing as only an Owl can, seemingly not at all perturbed to have been captured, and not at all perturbed to find itself on display this close to people. It seemed to have an all-in-an-owl’s-day’s-work attitude, and certainly gave the gathered crowd a memory none of us will soon forget.

It is, by the way, a young (this year’s) female. Odds are against it…they are against all young birds who suffer up to 85 percent mortality in their first year…but just maybe this young lady will wend her way back, come April or May, to the Artic Tundra and raise her own brood.

I was at the back of the crowd, so my shots are taken holding the camera over my head using the flip out LCD on my new Olympus OM-D E-M10. The 75-300mm zoom gave me an excellent (150-600 equivalent) framing range from about 12 to 15 feet. Shutter priority @ 1000th of a second. ISO 800 @ f7.1. 600mm equivalent.

I have lots of pictures from the adventure…and I will undoubtedly share a few more, along with more of the story of invasion years that we head.

Captured but not captive…that, in fact, pretty much sums up this Snowy Owl’s attitude perfectly.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *