Snow Day Cold Case

It's a sort of "Whodunnit?" and most definitely still a cold case.

I doubt  that you would find this story in the mystery section of a bookstore though.

The victim was a mourning dove, whose feathers were sprawled over the freshly fallen snow on a property in Leesburg.

I discovered the scene while doing some animal tracking and of course, camera-trapping last week.

The mourning dove was probably picked off by bird, as there were no other tracks in the snow.

This could most likely rule our foxes, raccoons, bobcats, and coyotes, but who knows for sure.  Top suspects could be hawks, owls, or falcons.  I wish I had recorded the acrobatics of a bird of prey taking down this bird, but I was there a few hours too late.  Oh well.

As always, it's a fight to stay alive for wildlife, and in winter, things get even tougher.

Snowy Owling

The snowy owls are all over now.  They've come from Canada and other places in the extreme north to visit for the winter.

Photo credit:  Hayley Ake

This year, the owls have come more south than in the past few years.  It's all part of the Snowy Owl Irruption.

I've seen a few of these owls in the past few months, and have been on the hunt to view them with my girlfriend since we heard of the first sighting around here.

These beasts hang out at local airports because the mowed grass and vast fields of airport lands are VERY similar to the landscape of the tundra where these owls come from.

They are experts at living in this weather and above lands with short vegetation.

Springfield Mall, Fairfax County, Virginia was the most recent place where we went to go see a Snowy.  People were lined up with binoculars and scopes, trying to peer at the owl.  It made for a great experience, especially when mall shoppers, children, and joggers came by and asked about what everyone was looking at.  The expert birders told them, and everyone seemed to have an extreme interest in these birds

These owls should be around for another month or so before they venture back towards Canada.  I'll be looking for them during this whole time.

Camera-Trapped Owl and Others

Here's a lucky picture that I recently got.

I had absolutely no idea that an owl would come near this camera.  It's probably dumb luck that it just happened to sit on that small log in front of the camera.  The date stamp on this camera should once again be ignored since it is wrong.

Other visitors included a night-time turkey and a daytime raccoon.

This week, I'm fairly busy with work, but am planning on making it out to Lucketts, Va to put up a camera on a new piece of property.  There are also plans to do another trip out to Leesburg, Va to check cameras and deploy 4 more cameras, fix the otter den camera in Great Falls, Va, and possibly (if there is any time at all left), head back out to Bluemont, Va to check the bear camera once again.

Sterling, Va cameras will be checked next week along with 2 more Great Falls cameras in a meadow.  The latter part of next week will be spent working and checking 2 cameras that I set out in Arlington, Va.