Snowy owls, true to their name, are white, snowy white. In the winter landscape, these striking birds look like ghosts, hunting for their prey on silent wings.
They make their home in the Canadian Arctic, but some winters they dip down into Minnesota, usually only as far south as Duluth. Still, these massive birds — 2 feet tall with wingspans twice that — cause a stir whenever they're spotted outside of their range.
And this year, they've already been spotted.
The first report of a snowy owl came from Up North in September. In October, the white-on-white birds were seen in the heart of the Twin Cities — in northeast Minneapolis, in Edina, in Richfield.
Does this mean that we might be seeing more of these traffic-stopping birds this winter?
"Short answer is, we don't know," said Scott Weidensaul, a Pennsylvania-based birding author and owl specialist.
Weidensaul monitored the snowy owl sightings in 2013, when thousands of the hungry birds descended into Minnesota, as well as dozens of states to the east and west.
During that year, which birders refer to as an "invasion year," looking for snowy owls became winter sport. People who knew owls only from Harry Potter movies started patrolling rural roads looking for the birds, which favored open farmland. The birds also were seen in the metro area, perching on highway signs, streetlights and suburban rooftops. Those birds nabbed headlines and stole the spotlight in local news broadcasts.
