By Jon King / jking@whmi.com


The Howell Nature Center has once again been called on to provide critical care to an injured wild animal.

According to a release, a call came in last Friday alerting the center’s wildlife team to an injured snowy owl in Linden. The caller had almost run the bird over, striking the bird’s right wing, resulting in damaged flight feathers and swelling, or what they referred to as “road rash.”

While rescue missions are rare for the nature center’s wildlife team, mostly due to limited time and resources, two staff members offered to help as they knew that this young snowy owl was highly susceptible to predation. Evin Luehr, Wildlife Education Coordinator, and Chelsea Hatcher, Wildlife Park Coordinator, dropped what they were doing and headed out to Linden, where they located the owl, which after giving them “quite the runaround” was finally able to be subdued so it could be transported back to the nature center.

After an initial assessment, the snowy owl was determined to be a young, juvenile male in overall good health. Officials say they are optimistic that after some time for his wing to heal, he will be released back into the wild. According to the nature center’s release, the owners of a nearby feed store reported that the snowy owl had been hanging around for almost three weeks, hunting in the cow pasture across the street.

Officials say that because of the relatively mild winter weather, many snowy owls choose to migrate to the lower 48 states from their usual Arctic habitat, but that the younger ones often run into issues with new, unknown types of predators and with traffic due to denser human populations.

If you have any questions, call (517) 546-0249 or e-mail info@howellnaturecenter.org.