Hi Everyone,

Julie and I drove through Seneca County today looking for the SNOWY
OWLS. We quickly found one at the corner of Kuneytown and Seybolt Roads.
It was about 300 feet on the west side of Seyblot. We continued on and
turned around at Center Road and county Road 129 without finding any
other owls. On the way back we stopped to see if the first Snowy had
moved. It did, but unfortunately we found it dead about 40 feet from
Kuneytown Road. I knocked on the doors of the 2 farm houses to get
permission to retrieve the owl but no one answered the door. I ducked
under the electric fence ( with hopes that there was not another wire
buried in the snow). I picked up the owl and place it in a large plastic
bag. This was a mere 40 minutes after we had seen the bird and its body
was still very warm.
A minute later we ran into Jane Graves and her friend. I handed the owl
to them and asked if it could be dropped off at the Lab of O.. We left
and further down the road ran into Tom McDonald (AKA The Owl Man ). Tom
has banded nearly 500 Snowys. We turned the bird over to him. He will
forward it to Ward Stone. The bird was a 7 month old female with healthy
fat reserves. Tom said that it appeared to have run into a car. Snowys
are one of my all time favorite birds and it was difficult to see this.
By the way this was not the bird that had a bloodied face, so there is
hope that that bird is still around.

Fred Bertram