But we've lived here 27 years, and this is the first one we've seen here. So many birders are coming for the rare sighting that police are ticketing cars that pull over and park on the two-lane Clinton County road. The owl also has created a cottage industry for photographers. David Flores, a free-lance photographer from Taylor Mill, has spent 30 days staking out the pole and the farm field where the owl hunts. He has an arrangement with a Wilmington bookstore to display his photos.
Rodents are Snowy owls' natural prey, particularly lemmings.
But the lemming population is cyclical, so the owls fly south about every five years when lemmings are scarce. Any bird that is this far out of range is seriously lost. Usually what happens with a bird like this is that he can't find food and he dies. The Cincinnati Enquirer , a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper.