The snowy owl is about the size of a Great Horned Owl. It is the biggest owl in North America. It is approximately 23 inches tall. It has a very round head with yellow eyes and a black beak. It has no ear tufts. It has feathers on its legs and feet to protect it from the cold. It is a bird that changes colors depending on the season. In the summer it is a brownish color with dark spots and stripes. In the winter it is completely white. The  reason it changes colors is so it can be hidden to catch its prey. In the summer it blends into tundra colors. In the winter it blends into the snow. Both sexes have dark bars and spots, although they are heavier on the larger female.

   The snowy owl breeds on the tundra, and it's very good at hiding its nest and eggs. The nest is made up of dried up tundra plants, and the eggs look very much like tundra plants. When the parents come to incubate the eggs, they move very slowly and carefully at the nest, so a fox or a raven won’t find it. Snowy  owls breed on the artic tundra of both Eurasia and North America.

     Snowy owls do not fly south for the winter but stay wherever there is food. Their diet in the wild is lemmings, ground squirrels, rabbits and birds. In the zoo it eats rats and horsemeat. During the breeding season the owls feed on the eggs of waterfowl, including geese and swans which are very much larger than they are. They have to be very quick to take the eggs of a swan!
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    The snowy owl’s behavior is mainly diurnal. That means it is active during the day. It is a fierce hunter.

   The snowy owl's call sounds like who-who.

  For many years the Brandywine Zoo only had a male owl. However, that changed on May 14, 2001 when the Brandywine Zoo celebrated  the arrival of a new snowy owl from the St. Louis Zoological Park.  It  was a young, female owl.  Before the owls could be put in the same cage, they spent several weeks getting to know each other through a mesh fence separating their exhibits.  Once all signs pointed to a good match, the fence was taken down. The snowy owls are now together in their bigger exhibit.

For more information visit:
http://www.discoverit.co.uk/falconry/snowyowl.htm
http://www.tulsawalk.com/birding/snowy.html
http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/wilderness/birds/snowyowl.htm
http://www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/hww-fap/owl/owl.html
http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/owl.html
http://www.owlpages.com/species/nyctea/scandiaca/Default.htm
                                                                                      by Morgan
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