Snowy Owl

Snowy Owl, adult male

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Snowy Owl, female

Snowy Owl, 1st year male, Rhode Island, December

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1. Description
2. Sound
3. Conservation Status
4. Other Names
5. Cool Facts
6. Full detailed species account

At the extreme northern margins of the arctic tundra lives the Snowy Owl, the northernmost, heaviest, and most distinctively marked owl of North America. Largely diurnal, it spends much of its time perched still and silent on prominent lookouts, waiting to make forays for prey.

Description

• Large, white owl.
• Some dark barring.

• Size: 52-71 cm (20-28 in)
• Wingspan: 126-145 cm (50-57 in)
• Weight: 1600-2950 g (56.48-104.14 ounces)

Sex Differences

Female slightly larger and more heavily barred. Male may be entirely white.

Sound

Generally silent in winter. Call a deep, powerful hoot. Also a series of harsh clicking.

Conservation Status

Population sizes difficult to estimate because of size and remoteness of habitat. No information on long-term population changes, except an apparent decline in northern Europe.

Other Names

Harfang des neiges (French)

Cool Facts

• Snowy Owl pairs fiercely defend their nests against predators, even wolves.
• An individual adult Snowy Owl may eat three to five lemmings per day, or up to 1,600 per year.

• The Snowy Owl can be found represented in cave paintings in Europe.

• In some years, some North American Snowy Owls remain on their breeding grounds year-round, while others migrate in winter to southern Canada and the northern half of the contiguous United States. In the northern plains, New York, and New England, Snowy Owls occur regularly in winter. Elsewhere, such as in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and eastern Canada, Snowy Owls are irruptive, appearing only in some winters but not in others.

• Young male Snowy Owls are barred with dark brown and get whiter as they get older. Females keep some dark markings throughout their lives. Young males tend to have a white bib, a white back of the head, and fewer rows of bars on the tail than females. Although the darkest males and the palest females are nearly alike in color, the whitest birds are always males and the most heavily barred ones are always females. Some old males can be nearly pure white.

Sources used to construct this page:

1. American Ornithologists' Union. 2003. Forty-fourth supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list of North American Birds. Auk 120: 923-931.
2. Parmelee, D. 1992. Snowy Owl (Nyctea scandiaca). In The Birds of North America, No. 10 (A. Poole, P. Stettenheim, and F. Gill, Eds.). Philadelphia: The Academy of Natural Sciences; Washington, DC: The American Ornithologists' Union.