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Its distinctive, mostly-white plumage gives away the fact that this bird is definitely a visitor to Southwest Missouri, but it is here nonetheless.
A snowy owl, a bird more at home on the Arctic tundra than the prairie, has been spotted across Missouri. This one has made a temporary home in Jasper County.
“This is a life bird for most people,” said Kevin Badgley, community outreach specialist with the Missouri Department of Conservation office in Joplin. “In Jasper County it is incredible to have one down here and seen in this area. Birders had been flocking from all over the state to Smithville Lake in order to see this bird, where as this one happened to show up right in our own backyard.”
The snowy owl is a large bird, standing about two-feet tall with a sharp beak and talons made for grabbing and eating lemmings and other small rodents. Its white plumage with brown speckling stands out on the green fields of winter wheat and brown prairies and fields of Jasper County.
Badgley said it has been years since a snowy owl was spotted this far south.
“This is the first time since the mid-1970s, 1974 and 1975, that we’ve had large numbers of them reported in the Midwest,” Badgley said. “Mainly the reason is because the lemming population was robust up in the tundra area so they had good reproduction years so we had lots of usual young males and birds that are coming down here looking for food now. Typically we don’t see them this far south in Missouri We’ll usually get a couple every few owls sighted up in northern Missouri, but, this year, I know there’s been over 40 documented owl sightings in Missouri this years and over 80 in Kansas.”
The Associated Press reported a couple of weeks ago on the sightings of snowy owls at Smithville Lake, a large man-made reservoir northeast of Kansas City.
Badgley said as far as they know, the snowy owl in Jasper County is her by itself.
“They’ve had at least two or three birds that have been at Smithville Lake and they’ve hung out for several months,” Badgley said. “This bird here, it’s been here for at least a month for sure. It hasn’t been seen daily, but it’s been seen regularly for at least the last four weeks. We think it’s the one bird. We’ve had a couple of confirmed sighting but the initial sighting from a landowner and some workers in northern Jasper County and that bird has been seen in a couple-mile radius. That’s the only bird we’ve had confirmed here in Jasper County.”
Its distinctive, mostly-white plumage gives away the fact that this bird is definitely a visitor to Southwest Missouri, but it is here nonetheless.
A snowy owl, a bird more at home on the Arctic tundra than the prairie, has been spotted across Missouri. This one has made a temporary home in Jasper County.
“This is a life bird for most people,” said Kevin Badgley, community outreach specialist with the Missouri Department of Conservation office in Joplin. “In Jasper County it is incredible to have one down here and seen in this area. Birders had been flocking from all over the state to Smithville Lake in order to see this bird, where as this one happened to show up right in our own backyard.”
The snowy owl is a large bird, standing about two-feet tall with a sharp beak and talons made for grabbing and eating lemmings and other small rodents. Its white plumage with brown speckling stands out on the green fields of winter wheat and brown prairies and fields of Jasper County.
Badgley said it has been years since a snowy owl was spotted this far south.
“This is the first time since the mid-1970s, 1974 and 1975, that we’ve had large numbers of them reported in the Midwest,” Badgley said. “Mainly the reason is because the lemming population was robust up in the tundra area so they had good reproduction years so we had lots of usual young males and birds that are coming down here looking for food now. Typically we don’t see them this far south in Missouri We’ll usually get a couple every few owls sighted up in northern Missouri, but, this year, I know there’s been over 40 documented owl sightings in Missouri this years and over 80 in Kansas.”
The Associated Press reported a couple of weeks ago on the sightings of snowy owls at Smithville Lake, a large man-made reservoir northeast of Kansas City.
Badgley said as far as they know, the snowy owl in Jasper County is her by itself.
“They’ve had at least two or three birds that have been at Smithville Lake and they’ve hung out for several months,” Badgley said. “This bird here, it’s been here for at least a month for sure. It hasn’t been seen daily, but it’s been seen regularly for at least the last four weeks. We think it’s the one bird. We’ve had a couple of confirmed sighting but the initial sighting from a landowner and some workers in northern Jasper County and that bird has been seen in a couple-mile radius. That’s the only bird we’ve had confirmed here in Jasper County.”
Badgley asked that The Carthage Press not reveal more precisely where this owl was sighted for fear of stressing the bird and harming its chances of returning to the north.
“We want to make sure the owl is not harassed and overstressed,” Badgley said. “These birds are coming down here in search of food, and a lot of the owls that have died and had necropsies done on them, they have been under-weight, undernourished, malnourished. It’s an ethical decision, we want people to respect the owls and respect wildlife like you would respect any other animal. If you have a lot of people flocking out to a particular area, one, you may displace them, but more importantly you’re going to cause them to use energy that they may need to survive.”
