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Phenology Report: Owl see you in the great outdoors

A Great Gray Owl watches while perched in a spruce tree in St. Louis County on Jan. 7, 2024. It is a large grey and brown owl with piercing golden eyes.
Contributed
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Courtney Celley/USFWS via Flickr
A Great Gray Owl watches while perched in a spruce tree in St. Louis County on Jan. 7, 2025.

On Jan. 21, 2025, staff phenologist John Latimer reports on owl irruptions, breeding canids, and the cheery resilience of chickadees and ravens.

This winter has brought us an irruption of owls! Irruptions are sudden increases in animal populations. In birds, irruptions often occur due to variations in food availability in the birds' normal range.

In the case of Great Gray Owls and Boreal Owls, that pattern is a bit more nuanced. Here's the timeline, as John described it:

  1. The mild winter of 2023-2024 made it easy for owls to hunt, so they successfully raised many young.
  2. In the fall and early winter of 2024, the increased population of owls competing for the available food.
  3. As the food stress increased, many owls began to leave their traditional range and move south to find more food.

It's hard for one person alone to spot an irruption, since a small number of itinerant owls will move south nearly every year. What distinguishes an irruption is when large numbers of a species move south winter in a region they don't typically occupy. It's much easier to distinguish between 'normal' seasonal movements and irruptions when you have observant ornithologists, phenologists, and naturalists reporting from across the region!

Citizen science projects related to the subject include the Finch Research Network, eBird, and Project Feederwatch.

Topics

  • Introduction (0:00-0:27)
  • Owl irruptions (0:27-2:05)
  • Owl road safety (2:05-2:57)
  • Owl breeding (2:57-3:50)
  • Canid breeding season (3:50-5:11)
  • Animal tracks (5:11-7:03)
  • Virginia Opossum range change (7:03-8:56)
  • Leaves and seeds on snow (8:56-9:58)
  • Cold snap (9:58-11:01)
  • Feeder birds and birds of prey (11:01-13:25)
  • Resilient ravens and cheery chickadees (13:25-14:02)
  • Conclusion (14:02-14:49)


What have you seen out there? Let us know: email us at comments@kaxe.org or text us at 218-326-1234.

That does it for this week! For more phenology, subscribe to our Season Watch Newsletter or visit the Season Watch Facebook page.

Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).

Stay Connected
Charlie Mitchell (she/they) joined KAXE in February of 2022. Charlie creates the Season Watch Newsletter, produces the Phenology Talkbacks show, coordinates the Phenology in the Classroom program, and writes nature-related stories for KAXE's website. Essentailly, Charlie is John Latimer's faithful sidekick and makes sure all of KAXE's nature/phenology programs find a second life online and in podcast form.<br/><br/><br/>With a background in ecology and evolutionary biology, Charlie enjoys learning a little bit about everything, whether it's plants, mushrooms, or the star-nosed mole. (Fun fact: Moles store fat in their tails, so they don't outgrow their tunnels every time conditions are good.)