----- Original Message -----From: Charles SwiftTo: IBLESent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 10:39 AMSubject: [IBLE] northern owlsHi All -
I just saw the report on northern owls from Minnesota on another listserv
and formulated this response. I think this discussion applies to a very
limited extent to owl irruptions in the west for the following reasons.
Boreal and Great Gray Owls are much more sedentary in the west compared to
the eastern U.S. In the mid-west and east they get birds coming down from
much closer Canadian boreal forests in the winter. The Boreal forest is much
farther away from us as compared to the east. Although we may get a few
Northern Hawk Owls from the Canadian Rockies the prey base there is probably
different than compared to Boreal forest so these may not correlate w/
irruptions from the Boreal forest. Indeed the only one of these species that
exhibits any sort of irruptive behavior in the west are Northern Hawk Owls
which occur in very limited numbers in some years (which may not even rank
them as irruptions!). Therefore I would not expect to see an irruption of
norther forest owls into the western U.S. for these reasons.
It would be nice to see a Snowy Owl irruption here in the west and these may
be somewhat correlated w/ Snowy irruptions in the mid-west and east (I don't
know this but it has probably investigated in the past during Snwoy owl
irruptions). Snowies obviously utilize much different habitat and prey than
the northern forest owls. Early indications are that this is not happening
this year (I don't think we've had a good Snowy Owl irruption in the west
for quite a few years actually).
thanks, Charles.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Charles E. Swift work: charless@uidaho.edu
University of Idaho other: charless@moscow.com
Moscow, Idaho
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