Owl Irruption

Lots of people are here to enjoy them. Here's hoping they don't add to the poor birds' stress.

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This winter, northern owls are staging what ornithologists call an irruption. Here in Duluth, we’ve had lots of sightings of some of the most sought-after species in America—birds that many birders travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to see, especially Snowy, Great Gray, Boreal, and Northern Hawk Owls. On Sunday, a Short-eared Owl was seen hunting in daytime at Park Point in Duluth. Even non-birders have been noticing Great Grays and Boreals along the highway between Duluth and Two Harbors.

This Great Gray Owl was hunting in the median along Highway 61 right in Duluth in January 2020. I parked along a frontage road below and walked up to the roadside, shooting between passing cars. Not crossing the road for a closer look was safer for me, the passing cars, and especially the bird; modern cameras have enough megapixels to end up with fine pictures even when cropped. This bird hunted there for a few days more before it was hit by a car.

Northern Hawk Owls are genuinely diurnal hunters.

Like Canada Jays, Northern Hawk Owls sometimes steal meat from mammalian predators. So unlike every other northern owl, this one sometimes actually approaches people to check us out. I took this photo on Stone Lake Road in the Sax-Zim Bog in 2011 when the bird flew across a large field after I’d spotted it at a distance, pulled over, and got out of my car. It stuck around for a few minutes but then moved a bit further down the road.

Snowy, Great Gray, and Short-eared Owls are what we call crepuscular, doing a great deal of their normal hunting at dawn and dusk.

Boreal and Eastern Screech-Owls are strictly nocturnal unless they are extremely hungry, and most of the Boreal Owls birders have been seeing were actively hunting even at high noon, meaning they’re in dire straits.

This is the best Boreal Owl photo I’ve ever taken. It was on Superb Owl Sunday in 2013, during another owl irruption. Russ and I drove to Two Harbors, passing two or three groups of birders photographing other Boreal Owls along the Highway. I don’t like pulling over on the highway and besides, I wanted to find my owls myself. So I went to a nice little spot right in Two Harbors, on an alley where one side is wooded up to a ravine. While we were walking along, my friend Jim Lind ran up to us to tell us about a Saw-whet Owl in the neighborhood. We chatted a bit, and suddenly Jim and I looked up and WHOA! This guy was right there, in perfect light!

After taking a bunch of photos, we staged a reenactment with Jim pointing to the bird.

It caught and ate a shrew right in front of us.

I could see by the way it held one foot up that it was injured, but was successfully hunting so we didn’t even consider trying to trap it to take to a rehabber. But a few days later, a Boreal Owl was captured right near where we saw this one, and it had an injured left foot. It was also a bit emaciated. After treatment it fully recovered and was released in early spring.

Wildwoods—Duluth’s wildlife rehabilitation center—serves as a local way station for injured owls before they go to the state-of-the-art Raptor Center in the Twin Cities. On Monday, January 13, Wildwoods posted on Facebook:

On Friday and Saturday, we received a total of six owls. They included a red morph eastern screech owl, two great grey owls, and three boreal owls. Of the six admitted, five were hit by cars. We are very sad to say that two did not make it.

Duluth is at the extreme northern edge of the Eastern Screech-Owl range. Jim Lind discovered this one along the edge of the large parking lot at the McQuade Boat Landing in October 2022. Oddly enough, when a bazillion birders showed up to see it, two of them discovered a much rarer bird, a Phainopepla, not far away, which everyone got to see.

Birders like to share information, so as always, word has been getting out on all kinds of social media venues when any owls are spotted. Some of the cars colliding with owls during this kind of invasion are driven by birders in too much of a hurry, ironically trying to add owls to their life lists. We should drive carefully wherever we are, but when so many vulnerable owls are about, extreme caution is warranted.

I took this Snowy Owl photo at the Sax-Zim Bog at dusk in January 2022.

Owls often hunt along country roads and highways, perching on high structures such as signs, powerlines, and poles that provide a wide view. To add a bird to birding lists, you just need to see it well enough to identify it, so seeing an owl as you drive past is perfectly adequate. The first Great Gray Owl I saw this year was perched in a tree along Highway 61. Even when traffic is low, it seems too dangerous to me to pull over on a highway that serves so many logging and delivery trucks and SUVs that are going faster than the 65 mph speed limit. There was very little traffic so I set my cruise control at 50, speeding up whenever I could see a distant vehicle behind me until it passed. None were coming when I saw the owl, but with the cruise control on, I didn’t slow down even reflexively as I passed the owl; I still saw it well. The only other Great Gray I’ve seen so far this year was along a very quiet country road with virtually no traffic at all, but a large group of birders was already there. I stopped momentarily, but it didn’t seem worth the bother of driving past the long line of cars, turning around on the slippery road to park, and dealing with so many people, so I drove on.

Crowds may irritate me, but they’re worse for wild owls--both dangerous and distracting, and the more people gathered near an owl, the more dangerous it is for the poor bird. Some owls seem able to ignore birders and photographers who are quiet, keep their distance, and stay in one group so the bird doesn’t have to keep looking this way and that to keep track of everyone.

A LOT of birders got to add Boreal Owl to their life list thanks to this individual, who showed up at the feeding station on Admiral Road in February 2020 and stuck around, even with at least 50 birders and photographers gawking at it, for over a week spanning two weekends! Birders policed each other so no people got too close, but woodpeckers and chickadees weren’t so thoughtful.

Much as it’s lovely to get close and linger near a cool bird, it’s always selfish to leave the roadside. Much of the land along country roads up here is private, meaning birders are likely to be trespassing, but more important to my way of thinking, owls seem much more comfortable dealing with people staying on that well-defined road than people who leave the road and approach closer.

When I’ve come to a spot where a Boreal or Great Gray Owl had been in view and retreated into the woods, the people who saw it claimed they didn’t frighten it—that the bird was in “hunting mode”—even as their own footprints in the snow told a different story.

On Tuesday, I saw a Boreal Owl with lots of people watching and photographing it from close range on one of the quiet country roads northeast of Duluth. It was in excellent light and plenty close enough for good photos and views from the road.

Most of the people gathered had crossed the roadside ditch to get closer. The owl appeared to be sleeping, but I could see its eyes were very slightly opened, indicating the owl was keeping close watch on us all.

During the short time I was there, it turned its head to face the road a moment, though it kept its eyes mostly closed.

I’m sure most of the others were waiting for it to open its eyes, but the sight of bright yellow owl eyes often alerts chickadees. Owls have no trouble dealing with chickadees swearing at them, but those little mobbing calls often attract the big guns—jays and crows. I think the Boreal Owl figured it was safer staying put, but that hardly means those people off the road, and even those of us who stayed up on the road, weren’t dangerously stressing it out. I took my first photo at 3:04 pm, my last at 3:06, whispered Godspeed to the little bird, and got the heck out of there.

We’re in for some very serious cold weather in the coming days which is going to be hard on these stressed and hungry owls. I hope the many birders who are coming here this weekend get to enjoy owls to their hearts’ desire without any of them adding to the owls’ already dire situation. Me, I'd love to be out looking for owls and all kinds of other winter birds, but I'm gonna stay put at home so I won't be adding to the pressure on these magnificent but vulnerable birds.