The Snowy Owl

AECP A1 Assignment #2- Summary & Quotation

The Snowy owl is one of the biggest owls in the world and also the biggest bird in the Arctic area. Its length is 21-26 inches, but when it spans its wings, it could be 60-65 inches. The female owl’s body is about 20% bigger than the male’s. Although most of the owls go out for searching prey at night, the snowy owls always do that during the daytime. Their sharp claws called talons and eyesight help them to catch the lemmings and other kinds of mice for main food easily, and sometimes they eat rabbits and birds.

However, during the long and extremely cold winter in the Arctic area, it’s too hard for them to find enough food. The Wildlife Fact File (1991) stated, “The snowy owl is capable of fasting up to 40 days at a time. It survives on the thick deposits of fat under its skin” (p. 3), or they would migrate to the southern places, even to the Caribbean Sea. In the article, they indicated “they have long been rare in Europe, but a careful protection program enabled one pair to breed successfully in Scotland. In eight seasons, they had borne 23 healthy chicks” (Wildlife Fact File, 1991, p. 3).

Every May to September, the female owls that are more than two years old can lay one egg. It takes about one month to hatch the eggs; then the chicks can break the shells by themselves and stay with their parents about one and a half months before they have the ability to take care of themselves. The article says, “The owlets hatch after a 30-day incubation period, using a temporary ‘egg tooth’ to crack through their shells. At hatching, they are covered with thin, white down, which is soon replaced by a coat of sooty, black down. At 43-50 days, they can fly. After 60 days, they are able to hunt” (Wildlife Fact File, 1991, p. 2). The life-span of the owls can be up to fifteen years; on the other hand, if they are raised by humans, their life-span can be up to twenty-eight years, almost twice longer than life in the wild.

*Reference

Wildlife Fact File. (1994). Snowy owl. (Card 11, Group2: Birds), 1-4.