{"id":58584,"date":"2014-01-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/snowy-owl-invasion-puts-natural-resources-professor-in-spotlight\/"},"modified":"2014-01-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T00:00:00","slug":"snowy-owl-invasion-puts-natural-resources-professor-in-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/01\/snowy-owl-invasion-puts-natural-resources-professor-in-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowy owl invasion puts natural resources professor in spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"press-release-import\">\n\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/05\/SnowyOwl.jpg\" width=\"208\" height=\"205\" align=\"right\"\/>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 January 9, 2014 \u2013 Natural Resources Science Professor Peter Paton has been in the news a great deal this winter providing expert commentary about an unprecedented invasion of snowy owls from the Arctic into the Northeast and Midwest.  Paton has appeared in the Westerly Sun and Providence Journal and on Rhode Island Public Radio, and this week he was interviewed for a report on the owls on the CBS Evening News.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\t\u201cSnowy owls are highly visible, they\u2019re active during the day, and they\u2019re charismatic, so their appearance in our area has generated some excitement,\u201d he said.  \u201cAnd they evoke a lot of interest because of their role in the Harry Potter movies.  It\u2019s almost a mythical creature that has come down from the North.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HjgWQ7HrQFk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nStanding 2 feet tall with a 5-foot wingspan, mature male snowy owls are pure white, but younger birds have gray barring on their white plumage.  It\u2019s the immature birds that Paton says have been arriving in the area in large numbers.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\t\u201cA lot of their migration is driven by the abundance of food \u2013 lemmings \u2013 in the Arctic,\u201d he said. \u201cBut my guess is that last summer there was also high production of snowy owl chicks, and the immature birds aren\u2019t strong enough hunters to find food in the Arctic in winter, so they\u2019re dispersing down here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\tPaton estimates that 20-30 snowy owls have passed through Rhode Island this winter \u2013 far more than the one or two that typically show up in the state each year \u2013 and they are likely to stay here for a month or so before moving on to find food elsewhere.  He said that while the owls typically feed on rodents, they appear to be feeding primarily on ducks in our area.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\t\u201cThey like to sit on the rocks or on the dunes and wait for the ducks to come close, and then they dive in and catch them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n\tThe most reliable place for observing snowy owls in Rhode Island this winter has been at Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, but they have also been observed regularly at coastal locations from Westerly to Providence, including Misquamicut, Moonstone and Narragansett beaches and Beavertail State Park.\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 January 9, 2014 \u2013 Natural Resources Science Professor Peter Paton has been in the news a great deal this winter providing expert commentary about an unprecedented invasion of snowy owls from the Arctic into the Northeast and Midwest. Paton has appeared in the Westerly Sun and Providence Journal and on Rhode Island [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}