McHenry’s snowy owl struck by car, killed; so much attention can be ‘too much for these birds’

Scott Weidensaul said he was not surprised to hear that the snowy owl that attracted photographers and birdwatchers as it hung out in fields in the McHenry area since at least Dec. 9 died after it was hit by a car.

Snowy owls are “gorgeous, big, charismatic, sexy birds” that people want to see up close, said Weidensaul, a researcher of the arctic raptor who is with Project Snowstorm, a New England-based nonprofit that studies snowy owl migration.

Photographers, bird watchers and the curious “want to get close to them, but it gets to be too much for these birds,” Weidensaul said.

Public Information Officer Ashley O’Herron of the McHenry Police Department confirmed that the owl was struck by a vehicle and killed sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning.

[ Photos: Readers share images of the snowy owl in McHenry County ]

A passerby who saw the white owl on the side of Bull Valley Road near Crystal Lake Road called it in to police sometime before 5 a.m. Tuesday.

“It was a hit and run,” O’Herron said of the bird’s death.

The person whose vehicle collided with the bird may not have been aware of the strike, she said.

The juvenile male owl, likely hatched last summer, was the first confirmed sighting of a snowy owl here in several years, according to Jeff Aufmann, vice president of the McHenry County Audubon Society.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources was informed of the bird’s death and it was taken to an area veterinarian’s office, O’Herron said. The IDNR has since taken the bird’s remains for study, said Sara Denham, wildlife resource center manager for the McHenry County Conservation District.

Weidensaul said Tuesday Project Snowstorm would like to examine the bird, or work with a local agency to get testing results.

“We hate to see these birds die, but we want to get as much scientific data from the death as possible,” Weidensaul said.

The attention the bird received before it died “is not the best for the bird’s survivability” either, Denham said.

Weidensaul is a natural history writer and bird migration researcher who co-founded Project Snowstorm 11 years ago. The group is now “arguably the largest in the world” for studying snowy owls, he said.

He identified the McHenry snowy owl as a young male based on photos sent to him last week. It’s not unusual for the birds, which breed on arctic tundra and sub-tundra, to come south in the winter as the birds spread out before returning to their native lands to mate.

“Some wander constantly ... others plunk themselves down and never move from a quarter-mile area all winter,” as the local bird seemed to have done, he said.

One of the things Weidensaul and his organization wants to check for is the potential of finding rodenticide in the bird. Owls' favorite meals are mid-sized birds and small mammals, which can include mice. If a mouse has eaten from an outdoor bait trap, that poison can be passed on to the bird, Weidensaul said.

“Rodenticide is a rapidly growing problem for all raptors” as it can cause the birds' blood to stop clotting. If the bird is cut while attacking its prey “the blood may not clot and it will bleed out,” he said.

When researchers first began a decade ago testing owls that had died, only limited amounts of rodent poison were found and not in lethal levels, Weidensaul said. Last year, half of the owls tested had lethal levels.

As much as poison can hurt a raptor, however, it was the attention the birds get that can be a killer, he said.

People “want to get close to them and it gets to be too much for these birds,” Weidensaul said. Snowy owls sleep on the ground during the day – often when people go looking for them.

“They are harassed all day long, getting just a little closer for a better photo or look, and they end up flushing them again and again,” he said.

Nor does the bird know what trees, humans or cars are, Aufmann said.

“He was just young. He just hatched last summer and he was inexperienced,” Aufmann said.

Since the owl showed up, Aufmann estimates thousands of photos had been taken if it. Many of those photos were shared on social media too.

For some, the owl may end being their “spark bird” that gets them into birding as a hobby, Aufmann said.

“I talked to a couple of people out by the owl and they learned about McHenry County Audubon. It will be the spark bird for a lot of people,” he said.

Aufmann invites those interested in learning more about birding in McHenry County to the local Audubon Society’s website, mchenryaudubon.org. Anyone who would like to donate to future research in the bird’s honor can do so at projectsnowstorm.org, Weidensaul said.

Do you have a photo of the snowy owl in McHenry County you’d like to share? You can upload it here at jotform.com/220893805992064 along with your permission for us to publish it. You must be the copyright holder of the photo.