A rare owl makes an incredible appearance in Glacier

Hungry Horse News

It is an odd little owl.

It hunts in both the day and the night.

It has a long tail, hence it's name - Northern Hawk Owl.

The last recorded sighting in Glacier National Park was seven years ago - May 31, 1998.

Now at least three separate pairs of the owls have been documented in a three-mile radius in the North Fork region of the Park, and there may also be a fourth pair as well.

"That's pretty incredible," said park biologist Steve Gniadek.

Glacier is the southern most part of the Northern Hawk Owl's range, Gniadek said Monday. The owl's main range is primarily northern Canada and Alaska, sweeping across the north half of the continent, according to the Sibley Guide to Birds.

But Gniadek has two theories as to why the birds have arrived in Glacier. One is there might be a habitat or prey problem in Canada, which would cause some birds to migrate south.

But the more plausible explanation is fire. Fires scorched much of the North Fork in 2001 and again in 2003. Now those areas have seen significant regeneration of young trees, forbs, shrubs and grasses as the forest canopy has opened up.

The surge in new plant life, in turn, boosts vole populations, and voles are what Northern Hawk Owls eat.

Fire also kills trees, leaving many standing, but hollow, either from the fire, or from woodpeckers. Northern Hawk Owls are cavity nesters, so they also now have homes in Glacier.

The owls are being spotted now, in part, because their young, called fledglings, are leaving the nest in a phenomenon known as branching.

The young hop out on a branch or log and stretch their wings, taking hops and jumps and first short flights while the parents keep watch and feed them. It's the call of the fledglings which makes them easier to locate.

The photos in this spread are of fledglings. The adults were watching from high above. They may actually be a fourth group, the Park has to investigate the sighting further.

Hawk owl sightings were extremely rare in Glacier prior to 1990, Gniadek said. By 1990, they were found in the Red Bench fire burn, which torched a large swath of the North Fork near Polebridge. But even then, they weren't common.