Idzie on Nostr: I haven't been able to stop thinking about this owl. She's an immature female, based ...
I haven't been able to stop thinking about this owl. She's an immature female, based on her plumage, which means this is her very first winter. There are only about 29,000 breeding snowy owls, and they are in decline. I want her to live for decades (the oldest known snowy owl lived into their early 20's at least), to raise dozens and dozens of nestlings to adulthood, to return south year after year to hunt in snowy agricultural fields and on shorelines.
I'm so glad I got to see her, but I think about and worry about the impact people like myself have on vulnerable birds a lot. The day I saw her there were many people who'd gone to see her as well that day (more than I realized then, until I looked at eBird that evening and saw how many checklists had been submitted). The next day when we tried to bring my sister to see her, there were more cars by a good bit than the previous day, though no owl to be seen, and I found myself disturbed.
She seemed entirely unbothered in the time I watched her, she was not staring at the cars, and she was even preening, which I generally take as the sign of a relaxed bird who doesn't feel the need to be on guard. But are all the cars (there's really no way to walk there) distracting her or disrupting her hunting? Our car was the only one to turn the engine off, instead of sitting there idling, and is the exhaust she must have been inhaling causing her harm?
There are many farm fields in the area, many other places she can choose to spend her time, so perhaps I'm worrying overmuch, and I often don't know what the right choice is. But if I come across an unknown snowy owl, I am not submitting that observation anywhere public.
There are only 29,000 snowy owls, and I don't ever want to live in a world where there are none of these incredible birds.
I'm so glad I got to see her, but I think about and worry about the impact people like myself have on vulnerable birds a lot. The day I saw her there were many people who'd gone to see her as well that day (more than I realized then, until I looked at eBird that evening and saw how many checklists had been submitted). The next day when we tried to bring my sister to see her, there were more cars by a good bit than the previous day, though no owl to be seen, and I found myself disturbed.
She seemed entirely unbothered in the time I watched her, she was not staring at the cars, and she was even preening, which I generally take as the sign of a relaxed bird who doesn't feel the need to be on guard. But are all the cars (there's really no way to walk there) distracting her or disrupting her hunting? Our car was the only one to turn the engine off, instead of sitting there idling, and is the exhaust she must have been inhaling causing her harm?
There are many farm fields in the area, many other places she can choose to spend her time, so perhaps I'm worrying overmuch, and I often don't know what the right choice is. But if I come across an unknown snowy owl, I am not submitting that observation anywhere public.
There are only 29,000 snowy owls, and I don't ever want to live in a world where there are none of these incredible birds.