Carnivore

Wild- Birds, small mammals, fish

Professional Care- Raw meat, rodents

Wild- 5 - 9 years 

Professional Care- 25 - 30 years

The Snowy owl is a patient hunter that perches and waits to identify its prey before soaring off in pursuit. Snowy owls have keen eyesight and great hearing, which can help them find prey that is invisible under thick vegetation or snow cover. 

Normally, Snowy owls lay between 5 and 8 eggs per clutch. But in good years - when prey such as lemmings are abundant - they lay as many as 14 eggs per clutch. Female Snowy owls lay their eggs at 2-day intervals so that the young emerge from their eggs at different times. The hatchlings in the same nest are therefore of differing ages, with some having hatched as many as 2 weeks apart. 

The Snowy owl is a nomadic species and shows a similar "irruptive" migration pattern to some seed-eating birds. Instead of seed crops, however, the Snowy owl's populations and movements depend on the populations of a small rodent - the lemming - whose abundance varies each year in well-documented boom-and-bust cycles.

There are an estimated 14,000 - 28,000 adult Snowy owls in the wild. High rates of population decline have been reported in at least the American and Canadian part of its range, with an estimation of a 64% decline in the U.S.A. and Canada between 1970 and 2014. This would equate to a population decline of about 44% over 3 generations (or about 24 years) in these countries.

Historically, this species was one of the most hunted owls in North America. Thousands of owls were shot for taxidermy, and adults and eggs were hunted for food. In some areas, nesting habitat may be degraded as a result of urban development. Climate change is likely to have a significant impact on the species, as changes in the onset of spring and snowmelt in the breeding areas are likely to affect prey populations.

Legal conservation efforts include particular conservation actions taken by organizations which make government policy to protect all species on earth. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List Status is a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity. Snowy owls are listed as “Vulnerable,” which means they are considered to be at high risk of unnatural (human-caused) extinction without further human intervention. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) lists the Snowy owl as Appendix II; this means that they are not necessarily now threatened with extinction, but may become so unless trade is closely controlled.