Snowy Owls at Logan Airport - part 2

Some time back, I posted a link to an local public radio article about Snowy Owls at Logan International Airport here in Boston, the focus of which was gentleman named Norm Smith, who works for Mass Audubon and monitors the status of the owls at the airport, as well as capturing and releasing them in safer locations and in a few instances, placing transmitters on a few birds to learn more about their movements.

Recently, Norm posted to massbird (our local list-serv) with a little more history and an explanation of what he does. I found it fascinating, and thought that you would as well.
So with the author's permission, here is a little more about Norm Smith's work with Snowy Owls in his own words:

"I thought it would be important to give a little background on how Mass Audubon became involved with birds at Logan Airport. On October 4th 1960, an Eastern Airlines propeller driven Lockheed L-188 Electra crashed into the sea while attempting to take off from Logan Airport after starlings were ingested and stalled three of the four engines. Tragically, 62 people lost their lives. It was the first commercial airliner crash in Logan
Airport's history, the deadliest air disaster in New England history at the time, and it remains the most deadly crash in US history involving a bird strike. Although starlings caused that crash, gulls, due to their large size and high number at Logan Airport, were also of great concern. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made funds available to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to study the cause of bird concentrations at airports and FWS contracted Mass Audubon to carry out studies on the gulls at Logan under the direction of William H. Drury, Mass Audubon's director of research at that time.

Over the next year, observers counted 38 bird strikes including mostly gulls, but also including starlings, dunlins, various ducks and a snowy owl. The recommendations by Drury and his colleagues were to remove the
phragmites from the airport as the birds were roosting in the vegetation, remove the gull nests from between runways, and close nearby dumps to remove feeding opportunities. The first two recommendations were
immediately adopted and the Massachusetts Port Authority also filled in wetlands on the airfield and established a "gull patrol" to frighten away the birds with exploding devices and occasional gunfire. This was the beginning of bird patrols at airports across the country whose job is to keep birds off the airfield from sunrise to sunset every day of the year.

In 1981, after a bird strike involving a snowy owl at Logan Airport, I was contacted by FWS to study the snowy owls on the airfield. They contacted me because I had been involved with them in other projects involving the
study or capture of raptors. That winter, I began observing the owls' movements on the airfield, collected pellets, and captured and banded the owls to determine where they may go or find out if they returned to Logan
sometime that winter or in future years.

Prior to the winter of 1985-86, I received a color marking permit from the FWS Bird Banding Lab, allowing use of an approved temporary dye that lasts approximately three months, in order to identify individual owls at Logan I found that some owls stayed only a day or two at the airport; others were there all winter. During the winter of 1986-87, I banded 43 snowy owls at Logan and in January of that winter had 23 snowy owls that could be seen on the airfield at one time. During that winter, there were at least five snowy owls involved in bird strikes but no damage to aircraft was reported. Through my observations I found that the presence of the owls on the airfield discouraged other birds from feeding or roosting in the area near the owl. We also found that attempts during the day by the bird patrol, when the owls were in a roosting mode, to harass the owls and remove them from the airfield, created a greater risk of a bird strike than just leaving them alone on the airfield. However, the owls would become active and go into a hunting mode as soon as the sun went down, just as air traffic began to increase. The jets are traveling at such a fast rate of speed and the blinding lights around the airfield sometimes make it difficult for hunting owls to avoid an approaching aircraft. As a result, owl strikes usually happen at night. Most bird species that are active during the day can usually be dispersed from active runways by the bird patrol using cracker shells which are similar to exploding sky rockets. This does not work with the owls because of their nocturnal habits.

In the winter of 1992-93, a snowy owl was sucked into the engine of a small jet during takeoff destroying one of the two engines. Fortunately, the jet was able to return to the airport and land under the power of the remaining engine. After that incident the decision was made by the FAA, FWS, and the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife that all snowy owls should be captured and removed from the airport and released south of the airport at Duxbury Beach early in the season when the birds are thought to be moving south and north of the airport to Parker River Refuge later in the season. As soon as the required permits were in place the owls were captured, banded, color marked and relocated. The color marks were helpful to determine if the owls would return to the airport and also to see where else they may be sighted.

Prior to my investigations, the general consensus was that the lack of prey on the birds' breeding grounds is the primary reason that snowy owls come to New England; and that most never make it back to the arctic. I
found it strange that in years that I captured high numbers of snowy owls, most were individuals born that year and in excellent condition. Several banded owls returned to the airport years later. In 1999, I was very
interested in potentially placing satellite transmitters on several owls to follow their movements. I called Mark Fuller, raptor biologist at the Snake River Birds of Prey Field Station and a world leader in the tracking of raptors to see if he was interested in collaborating in such a project. One question I had for Mark was whether the transmitters adversely impact the raptors in any way. He has had no evidence that the transmitter he has placed on various species of birds including raptors has in any way affected their stress level, hunting ability or migration movements. I then applied for and received the necessary permits and was trained on how to properly attach the transmitters. I first placed a transmitter on a captive snowy owl to see how it would adjust to the transmitter and the Teflon harness. After one month, I could not find any problems or concerns related to the transmitter or harness. Each transmitter including the harness weighs a total of 30 grams. The average weight for a snowy owl we have put transmitters on is 2200 grams which keeps us well below the maximum 3% of the bird's body weight permitted by the Bird Banding Lab. To put the weight of a transmitter in perspective of the common prey of a
snowy owl; an average meadow vole weighs 36 grams, a brown lemming averages 68 grams and a Norway rat is 300 grams. Through collecting and examining over 5,000 pellets as well as observing numerous prey captures
Snowy Owls eat rodents, small mammals, insects, fish and a number of birds including geese and other raptors. The one piece Teflon harness is very smooth and is underneath the surface feathers. Snowy Owls hunt in open habitat so they do not fly through trees and shrubs, reducing the risk of the harness becoming entangled. The harness is connected to the transmitter by means of a thread which decomposes over time, allowing the transmitter and harness to separate from the body and fall to the ground.

Out of the 14 satellite transmitters we have put on snowy owls to date, three owls have been shot in Massachusetts (something we didn't expect and wouldn't have known without the transmitters to recover the bodies), one made it to upstate New York where it either died or took the transmitter off, and the other ten returned to the arctic in the vicinity of Baffin Island. My study has shown that snowy owls are not coming to New England because they are in poor condition as the prior literature has surmised. Rather, they are coming here because of a good food supply in the arctic, creating a strong breeding year with more owls to take a nomadic journeysouth. We also know that many owls return to the arctic. We now know this because of the satellite transmitters that were placed on those owls.

Banding these snowy owls has also been important as we have seen a number of owls return to the airport years later. For instance, one snowy owl returned to Logan 16 years after being banded, and it is the oldest known wild snowy owl in the world to date. Our 28 years of research has also shown that Logan Airport has the largest known wintering population of snowy owls in the northeast. As far as stress to these birds as part of our investigations is concerned, I have not seen any documentation showing that stress from birders, photographers or researchers impacts owls or other raptors. If anyone is aware of any reliable documentation that indicates otherwise, I'd be interested in reviewing it.

It was a great year for breeding snowy owls in the arctic this past summer and as a result we have observed good numbers of owls this winter. As of today, I have banded 40 snowy owls this winter, including 30 captured at Logan Airport. Twelve of those were released at Duxbury Beach and 18 were released at Parker River Refuge. All but two of those owls were hatch year birds and all in excellent condition. Many visitors to Parker River and Duxbury Beach this winter had an opportunity of a lifetime to see a snowy owl up close, learn about their habits, adaptations and what we have learned from the longest ongoing wintering snowy owl study in the world.

Unfortunately, five snowy owls were killed at Logan this winter as a result of bird strikes and who knows how many others would have been killed if we didn't relocate them. I have had reports of our color-marked owls this winter from Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey and Virginia. On a number of the owls I banded this winter and recaptured the color mark has already faded away and is no longer visible. I am always interested in reports of color marked snowy owls.

Two years ago at the International Owl Festival in the Netherlands, I helped form a Snowy Owl Working Group with participants from Norway, Finland, Greenland, Canada, USA and Russia to collaborate on research
related to the global population and status of snowy owls. This winter Mass Audubon's Snowy Owl Project helped fund a much needed snowmobile for researchers in Russia so they can continue a 25 year study on breeding snowy owls. Our goal is to better understand, appreciate and protect these magnificent creatures so future generations can enjoy them as well, especially in the face of significant threats, like climate change, to the
habitat of these birds."