Snowy owl dazzles as it visits McHenry-area field over weekend; 1st recorded sighting in county in 6 years

A celebrity who flew into McHenry over the weekend has been “ridiculously cooperative” with those looking for a photograph, said Jeff Aufmann.

On Sunday, dozens of cars were parked at Bull Valley Road and Cunat Drive, hoping to catch a view and snap a photo of the star - a visiting snowy owl.

“They are a very intermittent and beautiful bird,” said Aufmann of the McHenry County Audubon Society. “It was sitting on telephone poles ... 50 yards off the road. There has to be millions of pictures of it” taken by residents over the weekend.

Word started spreading among birders on Friday evening that a snowy owl, a native of the arctic tundra, was hanging out in southwest McHenry. It is the first snowy owl to visit McHenry County - at least that he and the Audubon Society are aware of - since 2018, Aufmann said.

The excitement for the bird showed up when he checked his online Ebird.org account. Seventy birders in McHenry County reported seeing the owl via that site, Aufmann said.

Local photographer Justine Neslund, of Crystal Lake, heard about the owl Friday night, and headed to McHenry first thing Saturday morning to find it.

“I was there at sunrise and didn’t see him,” so she said she went on to look for other owls to photograph. She later went back “and saw the owl and spent a good part of Saturday observing it.”

She kept on calling the bird a “she, because she is so beautiful” but Aufmann challenged that in a group text for birders that the two are part of. So Neslund reached out to the experts, projectSNOWstorm.org. The nonprofit group traces the bird’s migrations in North America.

Based on her photo of the owl taking flight, wings outstretched, “this is a young male that was hatched during the summer of 2024,″ according to the organization’s David Brinker.

Snowy owls live on the tundra above the tree line and nest in the ground, Aufmann said. “What happens is they come in cycles.”

If that cycle brings a lot of snowy owls to lower latitudes, it can be considered “an eruption” of the bird and is likely due to a successful breeding season that year, Aufmann said, explaining that if more hatchlings survive, they are more likely to travel farther looking for prey.

“The babies lived and more owls are dispersing,” he said.

He’s heard of reports of snowy owls this year in places like Green Bay and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Montrose Harbor in Chicago and in Waukegan. On a drive Saturday, he saw one “in a random cornfield” downstate, too.

The McHenry bird seemed unconcerned about humans regardless of how many showed up to catch sight of him.

“There were concerns that people might be bothering him, but most have behaved well and given the owl distance,” Aufmann said.

Neslund admits to being a little obsessed with owls, and not just the snowy variety. Over the weekend she also found and photographed great horned and short eared owls.

“There were concerns that people might be bothering him, but most have behaved well and given the owl distance.”

—  Jeff Aufmann, McHenry County Audubon Society

She asked those hoping to catch a glimpse of the visitor from the north to respect both it and the property of those it chooses to perch on while it is here.

“We have to regard these owls as something special and precious,” Neslund said. “Keep you distance and keep respect, and be respective of the people who live there.”

On Monday, the bird had moved to a farm field west of where he was originally spotted. Neslund and others were watching it from the side of the road when another person came up, and proceeded to walk onto the property to get a closer look.

Before she became a member of the local Audubon Society, she probably would have done the same, Neslund said. “I walked right into a farm field because I wanted to get to to the snowy owl. But when you know better, you do better.”

The snowy owl will eventually head back to the arctic to breed. The forecasted cold snap won’t bother him, either, Aufmann said. “He will figure it out when it gets too warm out.”

But he may stick around, Aufmann added. “The fact he hasn’t left yet may mean he will stay awhile. He seems to like the area.”