A Snowy Owl in Orange County, California

[Grumpy Old Guy]

You no doubt may have heard about the snowy owl that has appeared in Orange County, Ca. this week. It has been getting national news attention. It's only about thirty minutes from our home. I've posted these in the photography and Lounge forums, but I felt they needed to be posted here too.



https://i.imgur

com/vuq5eG9.jpg

[Skittles]

1. he seems so laid-back

oblivious to the stir he is causing

*
How rare is a snowy owl?
Traditionally found in more arctic areas like the tundra, snowy owls are exceedingly scarcely seen as less then 30,000 are believed to remain across the world.1 day ago

[Donkees]

2. Last winter one toured Washington, DC

Far from its summer breeding grounds in Canada, the snowy owl was first seen on January 3, the day a winter storm dumped eight inches of snow on the city.

Since then, it's been spotted in the evenings flying around Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood, landing on Union Station, the National Postal Museum, various Senate buildings, and Capitol Police headquarters.

https://www.voanews.com/a/rare-snowy-owl-soars-over-washington-thrills-observers-/6391053.html

[Donkees]

3. Project SNOW-Storm: Join us as we research the annual movements of Snowy Owls

HISTORICAL RECORDS FOR SNOWY OWLS IN CALIFORNIA, ALL FROM MONTEREY NORTH, EXCEPT FOR THE CURRENT (RED) BIRD NEAR LOS ANGELES. (EBIRD/CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY)

https://www.projectsnowstorm.org/posts/a-year-end-update-and-an-out-of-place-owl/

Scott Weidensaul December 30, 2022

The biggest snowy owl news in the past week comes from an unexpected place — southern California.

Some months back a video of a snowy owl on a rooftop, reportedly from San Pedro, near the Port of Los Angeles, was posted to the iNaturalist website. Given the absence of previous records of that species so far south on the West Coast, there was initial skepticism about the veracity of the report, and an immediate assumption that, if valid, it likely represented an owl that rode a ship into the port. But there were no further observations, and the speculation died off.

Then on Monday, a video of a snowy owl from Cypress, CA, about 15 miles (23 km) east of the port, was posted to the California rare birds Facebook group, and this time the bird was quickly refound and verified. That also restarted the debate about its origins. There are California snowy owl records, all (so far as I am aware) from Monterey north, and all from years when there were big flights along the Northwest coast. That is not the case this year, when there have been no reports of other snowy owls anywhere south of Alaska or west of the coast ranges.

The assumption, again, is that this owl rode south on a ship from — well, no one can hazard a guess. A few have pointed out that snowies can cross long distances of open water, like the multiple records in Bermuda, or one that made it to Hawaii about a decade ago. But those incidents, again, generally coincided with big irruption flights.

Snowies do land on ships. During the irruption flight of 1945-46, ornithologist Alfred Gross documented more than two dozen cases of snowy owls landing on vessels in the north Atlantic, and in 2021 birders in Spain were agog when not one but three snowy owls showed up, the first ever seen in Spain, two of them close to a large and active port.

Whatever the California Bird Records Committee decides regarding the countability of the Cypress owl, it’s made a lot of SoCal birders very happy this holiday week.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

4. Thanks for the info.

I have heard one report that it has been in the neighborhood for about three months, but we're just hearing about it now.

I'm probably going back this morning.