Today, while scouting for the bus trip that I will help to lead on Sunday for the Houston Nature Center Festival of Owls (Houston, MN), I found a juvenile male Snowy Owl on the north side of County Road 3 a few miles west of Brownsville, MN. When I first spotted it, it was on the bank of a stock pond. After I stopped, the bird got nervous and moved a little farther away. It was at that point, that I realized that it had something fairly large in its talons. The prey item turned out to be a Muskrat. It was large enough that the bird couldn't fly very well and it only moved about 30 yards from the road.
The bird was located along County Road 3 about a mile west of the intersection of County Rd 24 and east of the intersection with Cork Hollow Drive. I talked to a passing motorist who lives right there and she indicated that her father-in-law had seen a Snowy in that area earlier this winter. Hopefully, that means that this bird will stick around at least until the field trip on Sunday. If anyone sees this owl in the next couple of days, please keep me posted with its location. It would be nice to share this bird with field trip attendees. Good birding, Dan Jackson Chaseburg, WI (Near La Crosse) www.pbase.com/dejackson ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
