WASHINGTON — A snowy owl that spent the holidays at Reagan National Airport may have moved on with the new year.
After a night of reveling and nearby fireworks displays, airport officials reported that the bird was nowhere to be seen on New Year’s Day.
The bird was first spotted near the runways on Dec. 20 by bird enthusiasts during their annual Christmas bird count, to much rejoicing from the birders. And it was still there on the morning of New Year’s Eve, when airport staff saw it in a parking lot, according to MWAA spokeswoman Kimberly Gibbs.
The extended stay was cause for concern for airport officials.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps biologists stationed at the airport to manage wildlife there. Snowy owls hit airplanes much more rarely than other birds — there were 84 snowy owl strikes from 1990 to 2012, according to Federal Aviation Administration statistics — but the strikes can be costly since the owls are so large, with a 4- to 5-foot wingspan, according to USDA spokeswoman Carol Bannerman. Ten percent of those strikes caused substantial damage to aircraft, Bannerman said.
Plus, “Between owl and plane, owls seldom survive. So it’s not a really good opportunity for the owls,” Bannerman said.
The biologists at the airport had tried scaring the owl into moving elsewhere by setting off fireworks. It didn’t work. They contemplated setting a box trap with a decoy animal inside or a circular net built to snap in half and trap the bird, Bannerman said.
More than 95 percent of the time, she said, USDA staff at the three Washington-area airports manage to chase away or relocate birds rather than kill them.
But chasing this one hadn’t worked, and relocating a snowy owl to a place where it won’t fly in the path of an airplane again is easier said than done.
“We try to make the airports not attractive to animals, to make sure there’s no food source. But in the case of snowy owls, an open, cold expanse is attractive to them as a place to rest, even without a food source,” Bannerman said. Even if a biologist drives an owl about 50 miles away, it is often able to wing its way back.
Bannerman said that one owl removed from an airport last year took less than three days to return to the runway. “We have researchers working on it. How far do you have to move a bird? Does it need to move in a particular direction?”
The USDA is required to seek permission to move an animal out of state.
The last snowy owl to capture Washington’s fancy, who was spotted downtown last winter, was eventually moved all the way to Minnesota after it was hit by a D.C. bus. (It died eight months later.)
Chris Paolino, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said officials would continue to keep watch for the owl at the airport.
“Like all birds, he’s capable of coming and going,” he said.
