WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Owl 'snow angels'

Have you ever seen some tracks, or a marking in the snow that made you wonder what made it? We received one photo that showed the imprint of some bird wings, leaving us to wonder who made that print, and what was he doing? Naturalist Bryan Pfeiffer had some ideas.

"They're bird snow angels! Right? You know I have to say, these are hard to identify. And you really need to break them down into two groups. If you see tracks in the snow, as if something walked to where this print is, chances are it's a grouse. Or maybe even a turkey. But if you see nothing leading up to the print, it's probably a raptor. Probably a hawk or an owl."

Then there was another photo, with the owl hanging out in the snow! We knew the story behind this photo. The photographer had seen the owl sitting in the snow, and then it flew away shortly after with a red squirrel in his talons!

"You know what it's doing? It's looking for dinner! Or it's got something in it's talons and it's fighting it, and it's going to take off soon. So they will wrestle with them occasionally on the ground, and then they will flap their wings in that take off flap, and that often leaves the print."

"I thought that I might be able to figure out, based only on the print, what species we've got? But it's tough. It sort of depends on the angle that the bird lifted it's wings at, and what else it was doing. But break them down into either walkers, with tracks, or some raptor that swooped down, grabbed something, maybe even off the surface of the snow, and left a print."

It's one of nature's many puzzles. Sometimes we can't solve them all!

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