'Global Warming' - SNOWY OWLS FROM ARCTIC REGIONS FLEEING, last time seen at the second coldest Winter.

Snowy Owl landing Quebec

'Global Warming' - SNOWY OWLS FROM ARCTIC REGIONS FLEEING , last time seen at the second coldest Winter.(Njspotlight).
Bird-watchers and general public warned to keep their distance, since birds may be underfed and overstressed from long journey south.

New Jersey birders are all aflutter over an influx of snowy owls, Arctic predators that seldom stray into the Garden State but are doing so this winter in numbers that are unprecedented in at least 50 years.

By December 6 around 20 of the birds had been seen at various locations including Stone Harbor Point, Sandy Hook, and Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, starting in late November.

The count sharply exceeds the state’s typical winter tally of zero to three, and is expected to increase as the winter goes on as more birds venture south from their normal wintering grounds in Canada.

“This is really just the beginning,” said Pete Dunne, director of the Cape May Bird Observatory. “When you get an increase this big, typically birds just continue to move in.”

Dunne, a nationally known birding expert, said the birds’ wide dispersion from their normal territory -- known in ornithological circles as an “irruption” -- was unprecedented in his 50 years of birding.

Given the expectation that the owls will continue to arrive, the influx may become the largest since birding records began. “It has the potential to be the biggest irruption ever,” Dunne said. The two previous largest irruptions occurred in the winters of 1890-1891 and 1926-1927.

The birds have clearly been driven south by a shortage of food in their normal wintering habitat, Dunne said, although reasons for the shortage are less clear.

One theory is that the species had a very good breeding season because of an abundance of lemmings -- small rodents that are a major food source for the owls. The resulting population boom means there isn’t enough winter food for all the birds in their regular winter territory, forcing some to fly south.

“There is not enough winter prey to support the expanding population,” Dunne said.

Outside of New Jersey, the birds are appearing in other northeastern states, southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes region, and even Bermuda, said Jeffrey Gordon, president of the American Birding Association.

Snowy Owls -- with distinctive black-and-white patterning and a wing span of more than four feet -- generate excitement among birders at any time because they are big, handsome birds that live in remote regions that most people never visit, Gordon said. The fact that they are now visible in significant numbers, and in unfamiliar habitat like New Jersey, adds to their mystique.

“Most people who watch birds don’t get a chance to see one,” Gordon said. “It’s a reason to celebrate.”Hmmm.......'The two previous largest irruptions occurred in the winters of 1890-1891' .......The winter of 1889 was the second coldest winter in the Netherlands and Belgium in the 19th century and that of 1838, after the coldest since the winter of 1789 revolution Read the full story here.