Stun with the way snow owls store food for young birds

The photos below will show you a surprising aspect of the snow owl.

Several years ago, photographs of the snow shot of Christine Blais-Soucy in Ungava Peninsula, Quebec, Canada shocked the online community.

The character in the picture is a snow owl lying in a nest with 70 lemmut bodies around. Lemmut is a small rodent, also an important food for snow owls during the breeding season.

Denver Holt, working at the Owl Research Institute, who has done many long-term studies of snow owls in Barrow, Alaska since the early 1990s, has also witnessed this amazing sight several times.

He said: "During the period of strong reproduction, we find 20-25 lemmut corpses or more at each snow owl nest. The most recorded time is up to 72".

Snow owl among the bait shocked the online community - (Photo: Christine Blais-Soucy).

Compared to many other birds also store food such as hawks, red-bellied ants, gray-backed pigs . snowballs are probably the most nesting retriever (these species usually only spoil 5-15 animals). bait on).

Snowballs don't always eat all the prey they bring back. Their forgiveness of all the bait to reserve in case of bad weather or when not hunting. It is noted that the owl also reserves bait in another place away from the nest.

It is also worth noting that the reserve of this bait is entirely done by the drum. The better the hunting ability of the drum, the more corpses of lemmut found in the nest.

The researchers found that taking care of the young offspring of a pair of well-divided owls: the smaller-sized male will hunt, the female will stay at the nest to hatch and feed the birds.

The drum shows the ability to "make a father" right from the start of the breeding period: they steal under lemmut, flying in a pairing ceremony to attract their partners.

They also play the role of the guardian of the team, often fighting potential dangers such as snow foxes and other predators. Therefore, even researchers are attacked by them.

Some scientists speculate that snow owl behavior comes from a different gender role in the breeding season. Because the female owl has a larger body size, they are suitable for hatching and shielding the young.

In contrast, the small size makes the drum more mobile, creating the advantage of hunting and attacking the enemy. They often attack snow foxes by diving down from above. Therefore, flexibility is extremely necessary.

The egg hatching time is not synchronized, so there is an egg hatched a few days, and the young owl in a nest will be different in maturity.

The researchers said there was a time when snowballs were spoiled for the 72 prey - (Photo: Denver Holt).

Holt said the young owl often had to stay in the nest for about 3 weeks, then they would quickly leave the nest to explore the world around, hiding in the "nooks and crannies in the tundra terrain ", but still "calling". " Parents to ask for food.

The owl will continue to provide prey to them as well as the owl and other young animals that have just hatched.

When all babies leave the nest, the owl can get out of the nest, and the instinct for motherhood temporarily disappears. Even so, the drums will still bring food to the offspring even if they start to fly (because hunting skills need time to complete).

Believe it or not, all of these bait are taken by a snowball alone - (Photo: Dan Cox).

When the amount of lemmut developed smoothly, it was noted that the number of " snowball " snowflakes swept down South Canada, even the US Florida.

It is hypothesized that this phenomenon occurred because the new owl individuals were driven out of the high latitude winter territory (territorial scramble), but Holt disagreed. Even the hypothesis suggests that the lack of food forced the snow owl to move south, which is not really reasonable.

As a nomadic bird, it seems that they will find a place where there is a lot of lemmut for nesting. And the phenomenon of snowfall in the south shows that the young owl has developed very well, leading to them moving further, until they find a suitable area to hunt.

In a year with plentiful food, you will encounter many new snowballs together at the same area with open habitats such as lakeshore, coastline, meadows characterized by Arctic terrain.

Holt explained: "This may involve migration behavior and topographical characteristics. They will move south along the riverbank and familiar terrain, until food is found".

However, there are also many instances of snow owl that do not move south in the winter. Instead, they flew north, spending both the dark and cold winters hunting ducks and a few birds living in the Arctic.