Too Close Can Kill: A Birder's Three Rules for Watching Maine's Snowy Owls
Maine's visiting snowy owls are already hungry, and getting too close can startle them into deadly collisions or crow attacks, a birder warns.
Snowy owls are turning up in Maine somewhat more often than usual this winter, and a longtime birder is asking people who go looking for them to give the birds plenty of room, the Bangor Daily News reported.
In a column, Bob Duchesne, vice president of Maine Audubon's Penobscot Valley Chapter, wrote that most sightings this season have come from southern Maine, with a couple near Bangor and at least two on Acadia's mountaintops, where the owls show up nearly every year. Numbers remain below the boom years earlier this decade.
The owls head south when a strong food year in the Canadian subarctic produces more young than the region can support through winter, so many arrive underfed. Duchesne wrote that crowding an owl can scare away the rodents it hunts, push it into flight where crows may harass it, and occasionally lead to deadly collisions with vehicles.
He laid out three rules. First, stay back; an owl that is looking at you is already uneasy. Second, keep watching the bird's behavior, because a perched owl can appear calm when it is not. Third, use binoculars, a spotting scope or a long camera lens instead of moving closer.
He described a Scarborough owl resting on a backyard swing set while six onlookers watched, most from about 100 yards away.
This story was first reported by Bangor Daily News.
