Four years ago I had never seen a snowy owl. I know.
Snowy owls are winter visitors in Maine, drifting down from the Arctic when food conditions push them south. Knowing this, it became my personal mission to find one. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard.
If you’re hoping to see one of these big, awe-inspiring white birds, eBird is one of the most useful tools available. The free platform turns birdwatchers into citizen scientists, with each sighting adding to a growing record of species populations and migration patterns.
Once on the site, click Explore. Under More Ways to Explore, select Species Maps. From there, type snowy owl into the search.
Purple squares highlight general areas where the species has been reported. Zoom in and individual sightings appear as pins. In the top right corner, the map can be filtered by year. For the best chance of success in Maine, set the range from January through February and select the current year. Red fire icons indicate recent hotspots, where multiple observers have reported sightings, while single observations appear as blue pins.
Just south of Cadillac Mountain, a snowy owl was spotted on Jan. 3 and 4. In the same park, three observers reported one on the north side of Sargent Peak on Jan. 14. In Penobscot, five sightings near Pierce Pond were logged in mid‑January. The Bangor region has seen many snowy owls over the years, although nothing has appeared there in the past month.
In February 2022, following this same approach led to a hotspot in Gleason Cove, Perry. The sightings were just a day or two apart, making the area worth checking. I searched the Sipakik Trail and the nearby beach without luck. Later that day, driving back from Eastport, I spotted one sitting in a tree right off Route 190 on the Pleasant Point Reservation, clearly visible from the road.
It was exactly where the hotspot indicated. Had I arrived at dawn or dusk, when snowy owls are most active hunting, it could have been spotted immediately.
eBird offers plenty of ways to adjust a search. Filters can be adjusted. Previous years’ hotspots can be explored. Or you can focus on known areas, like two locations in Acadia where snowy owls are often reported.
It’s pretty amazing how much information about natural resources is publicly available online. What once required years of local knowledge can now be accessed instantly.
Is it more rewarding to spot one on your own, without any data? Perhaps. But that’s your choice. If someone tells me there’s a snowy owl in a field, I’m going to check it out.
Some birds, like the great gray owl, are classified as a sensitive species and appear only as general sightings, marked by purple squares. That makes access to exact snowy owl locations a privilege.
As birder and outdoor contributor Bob Duchesne advises, follow three simple rules when observing them: don’t get too close, watch their behavior and use optics to view from a distance. It would be a shame for this valuable information to vanish back to purple squares instead of precise pins.
Seeing that bird in person was unforgettable. I remember shouting in surprise, stunned that I had actually found one.
Awe. Hedwig. Awe again.
If you haven’t checked this bird off your list yet, this is worth a shot. It beats sitting on the couch all winter.
My next mission? Getting a camp robber to perch in my hand. No matter how many times I hold my arm out, it still hasn’t happened.