birds

Fluffy White Owl

We started out our Arctic circle adventure looking for one of its most famous residents. We went out looking for the snowy owl. These large owls are known from the Harry Potter books. They are amazing and so cool to see!

Date: 12/6

Location: Northern Canada- arctic circle

• Snowy owls are covered in long white feathers. The feathers cover every part of them including their feet and beak.
• They are most active at dusk and dawn, but are diurnal (active during the day) during the summer when there is little darkness.

• Females are larger than males and have molted or spotted brown colors on their feathers. This helps them blend in with the ground.
• Snowy owls nest on the ground.
• They have excellent hearing and eyesight.
• Snowy owls mate for life and both the male and female take care of the chicks.
• Snowy owls are ambush predators!

After watching these amazing predators for several hours, we headed back to our cabin for the rest of the day to warm up. We had to rest up to meet tomorrow’s animal.

Sooty Sooty!

We spent our last day in the lovely temperate rainforest meeting the Sooty grouse! These funny birds were so fun and gregarious. We had never met a grouse- so it was exciting to meet this one!

Date: 11/30

Location: Temperate Rainforest

• Sooty grouse spend most of their time foraging on the ground.
• They will eat pine needles in trees during the winter.
• They are closely related to dusky and blue grouse.
• Males sing deep loud songs and strut with their tail feathers raised and their neck feathers puffed out!

• Females incubate the eggs and raise the chicks, who follow their mother around.
• Chicks are full grown at 13 weeks.

We had fun watching these birds walking around and heading up into the trees to eat. We love their funny tail feathers. We think the grouse look like a peacock and a turkey had a baby! They are cute and funny looking at the same time!

A Bird Named Clark

We spent today bird watching again. We wanted to find a really interesting bird that is known for its amazing memory! So off we went with our binoculars in search of the Clark’s Nutcracker!

Date: 11/16

Location: Temperate Rainforest

• Clark’s nutcrackers have long shark beaks for extracting pine seeds from cones.
• They store these seeds for the winter.

• Scientists say Clark’s nutcrackers make a spacial map in their brain and that is how they remember where their food caches are!
• Unlike other birds, Clark’s nutcrackers are active during winter and often may have chicks in January or February.
• These amazing birds do forget seeds over the season and in turn plant pine trees all over the forest.
• Clark’s nutcrackers are members of the corvid family (crows and jays).
• These great little birds were discovered by William Clark on his expedition west with Meriwether Lewis!
• They do stay in monogamous pairs. Both female and males incubate the eggs.

We had so much fun watching these gregarious birds in the forest! We are so fascinated by their cache behavior. Their memory is crazy. Scientist have studied these little birds to learn about how intelligent they really are. Edmond swears they keep little maps with X marks to keep up with all of those seeds!

Whoooooo Did We Spot?

We spent our first night in a cabin in the forest. The trees are so big and tall. We hope to learn more about the trees while we are here, not just the animals. It is definitely chilly, but we sat on the back porch so that we could listen and look for this animal. And man did we hear them and we did spot one with our night vision goggles! We found the great horned owl.

• Great horned owls have feathery tufts on their heads.
• They are the most abundant owl in the Americas.

• They have been known to predate on falcons, other owls and even scorpions.
• Great horned owls are nocturnal.
• Male great horned owls are smaller than the females.
• Great horned owls are known to mate for life. You can often hear pairs call to each other.
• They have bright amazing yellow eyes.

We could have stayed up all night to listen to the owls calling each other! Take a listen to their haunting calls. These amazing raptors can be found all over North America, but it sure was neat to spot them on our first night in the temperate rainforest!