Snowy Owl at Nisqually

All photos courtesy Dennis Ellison, Nisqually NWR Volunteer. These photos were taken in 2005.

   I was out for clouds on Wednesday morning, completely happy with just the clouds. Until a volunteer pointed out the snowy owl, sitting on a hummock out in the estuary, bout 100 yards north of the trail. Once I saw the owl through the spotting scope, I couldn't take my eyes off this beautiful bird of the tundra--the Arctic tundra, the dry, frozen, treeless land between the northernmost forests of Alaska and Canada and the icy Arctic Ocean. Using an online "as the crow flies" mapping tool, I figured this snowy owl could have flown about 2000 miles to Nisqually from a randomly chosen tundra location--Atqasuk, Alaska. Distances to other areas of the tundra would be comparable. Incredible.

    Snowy owls are adapted to spending the entire winter on the tundra, but not all snowy owls spend every winter there. Some regularly migrate in winter to southern Canada, and the northern US--the plains, New York, and New England, notably. Once every four years or so, winter irruptions bring snowy owls much further south--to the Pacific Northwest and even as far as California, Texas, and Florida.  

  Irruptive behavior is linked to the food supply and, in the case of the snowy owl, this means lemmings, a year-round resident of the tundra. Lemmings are rodents that dig vast networks of tunnels beneath the snow where they survive the harsh winters by eating plant roots. 

    Snowy owls pick off lemmings when they emerge from their tunnels for fresh air. An adult snowy owl will eat three to five lemmings a day; a breeding male will spend hours catching dozens of lemmings to pile up in front of a female he is courting. If the female accepts him, they will fly off together, the overjoyed male may catch another lemming and pass it to his mate with one foot in mid-flight.

   In a boom lemming year, the snowy owl may raise a dozen chicks, feeding them up to 2000 lemmings before they can hunt on their own. 

  After a 4-5 year cycle of successful feeding and breeding, the lemming population reaches a peak and soon  deplete their food supply. Yes they panic. Yes they become hyperactive. Yes they run across the tundra in all directions (and once in a line stretching 30 miles long). Yes they drown trying to cross large rivers. They are  desperate, and behave like proverbial lemmings. Exposed, the lemmings are either hunted or starve, and their population crashes. This starts a chain reaction through the tundra food web. Snowy owls are forced southward in search of new sources of food. 

Two snowy owls perched on snags at mouth of the Nisqually River.

  So, the snowy owl I was seeing--likely a juvenile male, according to the refuge biologist--was likely exhausted and starving. Nisqually is abundant with food sources for the owl, but the owl has at least two things going against it. There are numerous birds of prey at the refuge competing for the same food: while I was watching the owl, I spotted bald eagles, a harrier, a red-tailed hawk, and possible a kestrel (the birders out that morning recorded 71 species, so I know there were more raptors out there). And, because snowy owls hunt on the tundra, the biologist tells me, they are not adapted to hunting where there are trees or other obstacles. They face the ground when they hunt for lemmings and so may crash into buildings, barns, trees, and other large objects while hunting in our landscape.

In the absence of lemmings, snowy owls will prey on small mammals and birds including rodents, rabbits, squirrels, songbirds, water fowl, wading birds, and...oh no...alcids. That could mean marbled murrelets.

 Does one snowy owl an irruption make? No, but the birding community is all a-flutter with online postings about snowy owls right now. Earlier this week, snowy owls were spotted in Washington State in Douglas and Okanogan Counties as well as at Ocean Shores; owls were reported in Oregon--one at the airport; birders posted sightings in Minnesota and Michigan and a whopping 100 were spotted in Wisconsin. You can go to a recent irruption map to see how widespread the irruption is this year.

   You can also go out to Nisqually. The snowy owls might not be there, but I guarantee something wonderful will be.

   

Clouds with Back Bend

Photo by M. Ruth

   The sky this morning looked as if it had been watercolored. The clouds looked soft, watery, and out of focus. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, but the clouds were still fuzzy. I am not sure why, but I know these were stratus clouds mixed in with some stratocumulus that were blowing in from the NNE. I spent about an hour taking photographs and then decided to spend the rest of the morning at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. 

   I dare to say there isn't a better place to get more sky in South Puget Sound. It had to keep reminding myself that I was not inside some celestial dome with clouds stuck on, but standing on a flat piece of earth with clouds moving overhead in a parallel plane. As I walked I had to keep detaching the earth from the clouds at the horizon to ruin the illusion that the two were actually meeting. 

The earth and clouds here occupy parallel planes like two slices of sandwich bread with you in the middle.

   I took several still photographs of the clouds, some with flocks of Canada geese.

 Some without.

  The mix of cloud and blue sky seem changed every few seconds. As I was walking, I was twirling around, trying to take it all in, taking pictures, walking backwards, taking more pictures. No matter how many photos I took, I just wasn't getting enough of this dynamic sky into my camera. I needed a fish eye lens, but didn't have one.

  So I decided to try something a bit unconventional (below). Turn down the volume on your computer (it was a windy day) and click on the arrow below to watch a horizon-to-horizon, north-to-south 20-second video clip.

 I was pretty sure no one saw me doing these back bends (or heard me groaning at the end). But I was being watched. One of the refuge docents pulled out her spotting scope and focused it on a lone snowy owl. It was beautiful--a juvenile with dark bars across its breast--resting on a hummock. While my tiny Canon Elph does well by clouds, its zoom lens turns a decent-sized snowy owl into a piece of popcorn (below). It's the really tiny white dot, but a confirmed snowy owl sighting--my first.

A snowy owl resting on a hummock at Nisqually NWR.

  More on the snowy owl and its journey from the tundra in my next blog.

Fog Blog

What a glorious spate of weather, so beautiful that it is almost heartbreaking. After our unremarkable summer, every moment of these autumn days presents something to write home about. For these days, I believe, we have the fog to thank. October, according to meteorologist Cliff Mass, is the foggiest month in Olympia. To celebrate, I am posting this fog blog--some photos, some science, some encouragement to trying to enjoy the lack of horizontal visibility that this type of stratus clouds brings to the landscape.

Last September, as my devoted readers may recall, I went swimming in the fog early one morning when Ward Lake was all but invisible. This year, the scene was the same (above), but I decided to photograph the fog moving over the city rather than swim in what was hanging over the lake. So I went up to Overlook Park in Tumwater with my camera. A water tower (below) marks the hilltop location of the park; this is the only time I have ever seen the color of the sky match the "camouflaging" paint color of the water tower. This is the view to the south.southeast. 

And this (below) is the view to the north./northeast Just to the right of the large tree is the ghostly capitol dome. . The fog was rolling in from the northwest. The photo below was taken at 12:15 p.m

 

This one at 12: 39 p.m.

This one at 12: 48 p.m.

  

And this one at 1:03 p.m.

   Fog is precipitation, formed of tiny water droplets, that takes the form of a stratus cloud--one that is in contact with the ground and that reduces horizontal visibility to less than 1/4 mile (1 km). If you went outside early in the morning this week, when the fog was the densest, you could see the individual droplets of the fog and watch them moving and swirling and falling.

   There are many types of fog--ground fog, ice fog, frozen fog, freezing fog, fog smoke, sea fog, Arctic sea smoke, Bora fog, steam fog, valley fog, caribou fog (caused by warm exhalations of herds of caribou!), frontal fog, upslope fog, advection fog, and radiation fog. I could go on...

   But let's talk about radiation fog. This is what we are experiencing in Olympia now. This type of fog forms on clear, cool  nights (you have been seeing the stars and moon, right?) and usually after a sunny day during which the ground absorbs the solar heat. At night, that heat radiates from the ground into the air; the ground cools sharply after this loss. The warm air radiating from the ground comes in contact with the cooler ground. The water vapor in the air condenses and creates visible fog. A whole night of this and the fog builds into a thick layer that rises over the treetops. 

  Why does the fog hover over Ward Lake and other area water bodies? Two reasons. Our lakes are located on low ground and fog, which is heavier that the surrounding air, settles in low spots. And, because Ward Lake itself is radiating it's summer's worth of trapped heat into the surrounding air. I like to imagine the lake's fog as its slow release of summer into the crisp fall air. As long as there is fog on the lake, I know the water is still warmer than the air. In November, the water temperature is closer to the air temperature and the dense fogs are mostly gone.

  Here is a wonderful illustration of radiation fog by my favorite American author-illustrator-meteorologist-painter, Eric Sloane. This is from his 1952 Weather Book (a 2005 Dover reprint). He's my hero.

   And, finally, because I had heard than rain was in the forecast (putting an end to morning fog), I went out my favorite really low spot--the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. I was hoping to find myself wandering around for hours looking for my hand in front of my face, being attacked by Canada Geese I tripped over, or falling blindly off the dike and into the muck but, alas, I was too late for such Accidental Naturalist fun. I did get to enjoy the thick fog hovering over the still-warm waters of McAllister Creek (below) at low tide. The photographs show the long boardwalk (under construction) that will take visitors half mile out into the estuary. Click here for info on the refuge and for news about the new boardwalk opening.

 

"It usually takes a rainbow, a thunderstorm, or some of of atmospheric antic to make us look upward and take note," writes Eric Sloane. "But if that gives us the habit, it is worth while. And I'll wager you will see a lot up there that you never dreamed of."