This winter has witnessed the largest Snowy Owl invasion Iowa has ever experienced, at least in my 77 year memory. Normally residents of the tundra in northern Canada and Alaska (and elsewhere in that latitude around the world), Snowy Owls in 2011 experienced a population explosion in their northland (probably due to an abundance of their main food source, lemmings), followed by a crash in the lemming population and a southward surge of young Snowy Owls, looking for food.

During the Christmas Bird Count at Red Rock, a Snowy was reported south of Monroe, Iowa, just outside the official Red Rock Count Area. The 8 or 9 of us conducting the count caravanned to the location and were rewarded with a close view of a young Snowy, on a post in a ditch right by the road.

Later reports over the Christmas holidays of Snowy Owls in Story County resulted in a couple of unsuccessful trips with my son-law from Oklahoma to try to find what for him and for my daughter and wife would be a life bird. Again, we apparently just missed the Owl after hours of patrolling the roads west of Ames. Then, early this week another (or the same) Snowy was reported just east of Ames. Barbara and I took off immediately after the sighting was posted on the Iowa Bird Line. We were rewarded with a view, although somewhat distant for photography purposes, of Barbara’s first ever Snowy Owl.

A recent post to the Iowa Bird Line contains a lovely video of Snowy Owls. You can access it at   http://www.owlpages.com/owlstuff.php?c=2012-01-03-0740