A great many birds will move to the Arctic in the summer to breed there, but not many will live there year around. The Snowy Owl is one which will live in the tundra for the full year.
They stay in the arctic for all year round unless the food becomes hard to find and then they will move to Greenland or North America.
When Snowy Owls are fully grown they are almost pure white, except for black markings.
They are entirely covered in feathers, even their feet, which have thick padding to protect them from the snow and ice.
Snowy Owl
Snowy owls are possessed of amazing eye sight. They can view prey on the ground from an incredible height and silently glide down to capture it.
They have, like most other owls, very good night vision, however Snowy owls are both nocturnal and diurnal. They hunt at night, but also during the day. When the owl gets food it will either swallow it entirely whole or tear it rapidly into large pieces.
Female owls will usually lay between 5 and ten eggs. Because there are very few trees in this area of the world, her eggs are usually laid on the ground or on small rises called hummocks.
When the mother owl is breeding she stays on the nest the entire time until her eggs hatch and the little owls are born. The father owl brings food to the female and guards the nest. Little owls are ready to be on their own in just a few short months.
It takes about 8 weeks until they are feeding on their own and ready to leave the nest area.
Summers in the Arctic are very short so if they were unable to feed themselves they would not survive in this habitat.
Snowy owls are one of the largest owls, with a wingspan of up to five feet. They are white in summer, but in winter they will change to brown coloration with some dark striping.
Snowy Owls eat a great many arctic lemmings.
The population of the lemmings in an area will determine if they owls stay in the arctic or winter somewhere else. If there are a great many lemmings, the owl population will also increase that year.
If they are fewer the owls will leave the area and fly as far south as Washington and Oregon to find it. When the food becomes more plentiful in the arctic they return to that area.
Find out more about the Snowy Owl over at Wikipedia ยป
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seen my second snowy owl today on the riverbank out side my house nr chepstow, what a site, it was hunting about 15 feet away from me,
i love owls
This is more of a question than a comment, but when I was a kid, during the Christmas Holiday season across the street from where we lived a
huge Snow Owl was perched on a neighbors roof and it would sit there
for days on end, and at night disappear… returning during the day.
As we were kids… we were always curious as to why it seemed to stare
at our home, but I must say at the time we did have our tree lights blinking
on & off as christmas lites do.
Well one night as we all watched tv and were not paying attention to the large bird across the street, “We” all us kids & mom too, heard this loud thud… right above our living room window, a bang against our home which was a brick building. well… surely you have to know that it scared the dickens out of everybody in the room and we all closed the curtains and
shut off all the lights and called it a night. and my dad worked at the time,
but never believed us. as he never was able to see this creature.
My reason for bringing this to your attention is even to this day me and my
brothers and sisters still are talking about this large Snow Owl… it was very
huge., and now we’re all in Our 50’s and mom is in her 80’s.
We want to know how large do these Snow Owls get in terms of height & weight ?
and could they have actually harmed us had it came through that window ?
As I remember it… that Owl looked to me… to be about 2 to 3 or more feet
tall, and I say that because it looked to be large even from across the street. Oh and one more thing.., during that next summer as I was cutting the lawn… I happened to stop in that area and looked above that window
and there it was a splatter of blood with alittle dried trickle coming down embedded, but never did we see that bird again.