After a (mostly) mild start to the winter, it seems the snowy season has set in across northern Michigan. But what about snowy owl season? These magnificent, eye-catching birds are native to the Arctic, but sometimes find their way south during the winter – reaching into southeastern Canada, New England, and even the Great Lakes region. The Leelanau Ticker touched base with Peter Wolcott, a docent with the Leelanau Conservancy and a long-time local birder, to find out more about snowy owls – including their migratory patterns, their fleeting wintertime presence in northern Michigan, and where you might be able to spot one.

“One of the easiest birdwatching things to do is watch snowy owls,” he explains. “Not only are they beautiful, but they’re also easy to spot. They’re so obvious, because they’re big and they’re white and they don’t look quite like anything else. And then they’re also easy to photograph, because they just sit there.”

While snowy owls visit northern Michigan every year, Wolcott acknowledges they are a much rarer sight for birders in other parts of the country. “You’ll get vagrants sometimes that go to southern California or New York City; it happens almost every year, they turn up somewhere unusual. And it’s funny, because then birdwatchers will jump on an airplane or get in a car and drive for hours, and you’ll have this mob of people wanting to see them.”

Fortunately for locals, big travel plans aren’t necessary if you want to see a snowy owl. In any given winter, it’s not uncommon to spot one or two within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, or near Christmas Cove Road in Leelanau Township. But Wolcott also says there are misconceptions about the species that can lead locals to miss them.

He tells the Leelanau Ticker that the number of snowy owls that make it to the Lower Peninsula can vary dramatically from year to year. “The number of them that come down here depends upon their food supply up in the Arctic,” he explains. “Locals may remember back in 2012, we had one winter when there were tons of them around. I remember on Christmas Cove Road, there were three of them, and you could see them just hanging out there every day for a couple of months.”

So far this winter, Wolcott says there have only been “a couple” snowy owl sightings in the Great Lakes region – likely the result of a milder-than-usual winter. “I’ve been reading that they’ve been having warm weather up in Alaska and whatnot, and warmer weather generally means it’s easier for snowy owls to stay up there and find plenty of food,” Wolcott explains. “But the weather is supposed to turn colder, which could force more of them down. They only come down here because they’re getting hungry and are having a hard time finding food, and that happens more when the weather is cold.”

Beyond weather, Wolcott notes that lemmings – a core food source for snowy owls in their homeland – tend to follow a seven-year cycle of population growth and decline. Where in that cycle any given winter falls can have a significant impact on how many snowy owls make their way south. “I lived in Finland for a while, and I remember one winter, the lemming population just exploded,” Wolcott says. “Suddenly, there were owls everywhere, because they had so much food to hunt. There would be a snowy owl sitting on almost every fence post.”

More grueling winters or lower lemming populations force a survival-of-the-fittest situation for snowy owls in the Arctic, which in turn sends younger, smaller owls south in search of food. 

Keen-eyed locals should be able to identify the age and sex of the snowy owls they spot in Leelanau. Chances are you won’t be seeing mature males, which Wolcott says tend to be “completely white.” Most snowy owls in northern Michigan will have brown, black, or grey feathers amidst their white plumage. Those markings are common on younger male snowy owls and on all females – though adult females, which are larger than adult males, are rare this far south, too.

The other issue is that many people simply don’t know when or where to look. One misconception is that all owls are nocturnal. In truth, snowy owls are diurnal and move around and hunt by daylight. Another is that snowy owls spend their time in forests, which Wolcott says causes people to look for them in the wrong places.

“You’re not going to see snowy owls in the woods,” Wolcott explains. “They’re always found in the open areas or around the edges of open areas. In Leelanau County, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is a good place to see them, because there are a lot of wide-open areas. Similarly, we have a lot of open fields up in the northern part of the county, and those are good places to look for them as well. Most people look for birds and trees, but the most important thing with snowy owl is to look instead at things like fence posts, stumps, shrubs, or other places that are not very high off the ground. That's where you're most likely to see them.”

And if you do spot a snowy owl, what of owl etiquette? Wolcott’s best advice is to approach them slowly and quietly, and to not get too close. “Every time you force them to fly away, it’s not good for them,” he says. “It’s not natural for them to be chased around. But as long as you keep a decent distance, why not sit and watch them or take a few photos? Because usually, if you see one perched somewhere, they’re going to sit there for a long, long time. They feed on mice and rabbits and raccoons and small birds, so they’ll just sit in one place for hours, watching for some activity.”

Photo credit: Sheen Watkins