He could’ve chosen a beachside all-inclusive resort somewhere closer to the equator, but Montana physician Kishore Karamchandani thought the frozen Canadian Prairies at the height of winter would be more of a hoot for a holiday.
“I got to see a hawk owl in flight, and I love to photograph animals and birds doing some behaviour,” Karamchandani said after a five-day tour of Manitoba hot spots for owls.
“I got some beautiful images. It was a really, really fun trip and I recommend people to come up here.”
Karamchandani, who is a pulmonary and critical care physician in Montana, was one of about five dozen people registered for sold-out winter owl excursions in Manitoba in February and March offered by guides with Eagle-Eye Tours.
Often, the company takes people places where they’re more likely to sweat through their Tilley hats and sun-protection shirts than they are to catch a chill.
But for the second winter in a row, international birders are flocking to Manitoba during the coldest months in hopes of spying owls hardy enough to survive a climate too inhospitable for many other birds, which migrate south.
“[Owls are] fascinating birds … especially the great grey owl, our provincial bird,” said guide Josh Dewitt, fresh off the first tour group with Karamchandani and others.
“The fact that they can survive our winters, [it’s] just awe-inspiring, and capturing people’s imagination for as long as humanity has existed.”
Eagle-Eye is offering trips to Belize, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama and other balmy locations with more biodiversity and more opportunities to see more species this winter.
Those trips also run between $5,500 and $7,700 Cdn. Dewitt says that could be a factor for some who signed up for the comparatively cheaper Manitoba owl tours, which go for $1,900.
But a lot of the ecotourists â who this year hail from Australia, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. â are driven to seek out Manitoba owls for other reasons, said Dewitt.
“You get some that are just intense birders â they have something that’s on their ‘life list’ that they need to see, and this is the place to get it â and other people, it’s just they want to experience something different,” he said.
Another draw is the variety of owl species in Manitoba in the winter and the ease of being able to find them without leaf-covered trees camouflaging the elusive mouse hunters.
“Owls in Manitoba have a long tradition of attracting people from around the world,” said Jim Duncan, the former head of Manitoba’s Fish and Wildlife Branch. “The first international World Owl Conference was in Winnipeg, and we attracted researchers from all over the globe [in 1987].”
He and his wife founded the Manitoba Nocturnal Owl Survey 35 years ago. The citizen science effort enlists volunteers to log sightings and data used for conservation science.
Duncan says the northern hawk owl and snowy owl are daytime hunters and are therefore targets of birders in the winter, but they aren’t the most abundant species in the province.
The most common owl species in Manitoba are the pointy-eared great horned owl and the teacup-sized saw-whet owl â neither terribly easy to see as they’re most active at night. The same goes with the third most-common species, the boreal owl.
That species had near-record numbers detected in Manitoba last winter, and the great grey owl was also having a big year, said Duncan.
He said he trapped and banded 60 great greys last winter. Many were near Lac du Bonnet, northeast of Winnipeg, where in February, Dewitt’s first group failed to catch a glimpse of the bird, with its distinctive disc-shaped face. They also didn’t come across a boreal owl.
That isn’t necessarily a sign those two species are suddenly in trouble in Manitoba.
“They go through this boom-bust cycle that’s multi-annual. It could be three to five years between the peaks,” said Duncan, adding owl numbers closely mirror boom-bust cycles of prey like voles and field mice.
“It’s a natural phenomenon that’s … part of the owls’ natural history.”
When an owl species goes through a boom, it’s called an irruption, or invasion, and it’s “quite a spectacle,” said Duncan.
There were anecdotal signs elsewhere in Canada earlier this winter suggesting a possible irruption on the horizon.
This winter so far in Manitoba “isn’t bad” for snowy owl sightings, said Duncan, with many seen perched on hydro poles and silently gliding over farmers’ fields south and southwest of Winnipeg.
“There are pockets of snowy owls where you can see 10 or more in a day driving some of the agricultural roads,” he said.
“These birds are available to anyone in Manitoba if they want to go for a drive and look for wildlife. It’s kind of like our own nature show right in our own backyard.”
Duncan retired from his government biologist gig a few years ago but continues his advocacy work through a social enterprise he founded called Discover Owls. He’s working on his fourth owl book, tentatively titled The Little Book of Owls.
He also dropped some of his owl wisdom on the tour group last week when he paid them a visit with his wildlife ambassador/roommate, Oska the great grey owl.
Duncan says he only managed to band a single northern hawk owl last winter, but told the tour that numbers are tracking up, and they could expect to see five to seven in the Lac du Bonnet region this winter. They saw five.
Montana’s Karamchandani said the visit from Duncan and Oska was one of the highlights of his trip to Manitoba. He plans to come back for polar bears in Churchill this fall.
“Not a lot of people think about coming to Winnipeg,” said Eagle-Eye’s Dewitt. “Our amazing wildlife … might not be super prevalent in the winter, but it’s there and it’s unique, and that’s why people come all the way out here.”
