The Snowy Owl Invasion of 1916
A rare migration of Arctic owls across the Cascades warns locals of an impending brutal winter.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The snowy or white owl of upper British Columbia and Alaska, the harbinger of a hard winter—so the Indians claim—are wintering this year in Washington and Oregon, camping on both sides of the Cascades. The bird is a large one, being nearly the size of an eagle, greyish white in color, and the feathers on its legs and lower part of its body are of a wooly nature. Four or five of the birds have been seen in the valley within the past ten days and M. S. Brannick is reported to have shot one this week. While these handsome visitors from the north are protected in Oregon, they are often shot on sight in Washington, despite game law protections that should cover them. Such extended flights are rare, having last occurred on a large scale in 1908-09.
“The snowy owl is as big as a brant and has a great white disk from which peer yellow irised eyes.”
Today, snowy owl irruptions are tracked by birders across the Pacific Northwest via digital apps, moving from the 'shoot on sight' mentality of the pioneer era to one of conservation and photography. These sightings remain a rare, ghostly reminder of the deep wilderness that still looms just beyond the Columbia Basin’s agricultural heart.
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