Last Friday, my friend Jon and I headed out to the New Jersey coast to find waterfowl, shorebirds and our main target bird – snowy owls. There have been early reports of the owls in the eastern United States and we wanted to see if we could find one. Last year, we got our Snowy fix in November and wanted to try to do the same this year.
Recent Snowy Owl Reports recorded on eBird
We decided to chase a bird who was spotted on Long Beach Island. Neither of us are familiar with this part of the island so we did not know what to expect. We parked the car and walked for a couple of miles on the sand. Every step we took was another that we would have to take on the way back. I started to feel discouraged and wanted to turn around a few times, but Jon was confident that we could find the owl. As we approached the very southern tip of the island, we saw two other photographers who passed us earlier on. They had their sights on something! It turns out that they were after the same target bird – the Owl was on the edge of the dunes.
The bird was looking around for a meal and flew a couple of times to different spots. We watched her make attempts at some smaller birds.
She landed up high on a pole, with the sunset behind her.
We went over to the other side to get what little light we had behind us and snapped away at this beautiful bird.
In total, we walked over five miles in the sand to find this bird. She did not make it easy to get to her, but once we found her she certainly was cooperative!
I’d say it was all worth it.