Owl patrol

If Norman Smith has some spare time, he likes to spend it at the airport. He's not watching airplanes, though. He's watching owls.

The director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Blue Hills Trailside Museum in Milton, Mass., has special permission to patrol Boston's Logan International Airport. He drives his pickup near the runways, looking for snowy owls.

Mr. Smith has been peering up at the sky for as long as he can remember, straining to spot hawks and owls in flight. He's always had a special feeling for "snowies," as he calls them. The large, mostly white nocturnal birds spend most of their time in the far North.

But it's not just snowies' charm that has Smith hunkered down in his truck for hours at a time, watching owls amid the screaming jetliners. What fascinates Smith is all that's left to learn about the owls. It's the "mystique of this white creature," he says, that attracts him most.

For example, scientists know that snowy owls have four talons on each foot, instead of the usual three. They know snowies can live up to 10 years in captivity. But no one can even estimate a snowy's lifespan in the wild. Researchers know the owls live mostly above the Arctic Circle, but no one knows where, in particular, they congregate. The owls' migration habits are largely unknown, too.

Naturalists do know why snowies like Boston's airport, though. And that's where Smith comes in.

It began in 1981, when Smith got a call from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Could he help them trap a snowy owl living at Logan?

The owl was a hazard to planes taking off and landing. Birds, especially big birds (snowy owls can be two feet tall with wingspans of 5-1/2 feet), may be accidentally sucked into jet engines. This can severely damage the engine and even cause the airplane to crash.

A rotating three-person Bird Patrol, hired by the airport, does everything it can to reduce the bird population there. They have lots of ways to do this, including the use of "cracker shells" and propane cannons. These are big noisemakers intended to scare off the birds without hurting them. As a last resort, the Bird Patrol may shoot particularly large and persistent birds, such as sea gulls and crows. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prevents them from shooting snowies, though. Instead, they call Smith.

Smith successfully trapped that first owl in 1981. Since then, he's been trekking to the airport at sunrise and sunset several times a week, pursuing the mystery of the snowies. He's trapped nearly 300 snowy owls to date. Logan airport, in fact, is the best place to find snowy owls around here. (You're not likely to spot the airport owls yourself without binoculars.)

The owls' natural habitat is the Arctic tundra, treeless stretches of open grass. But every year, from November to April, when many birds fly south, snowies can be found almost anywhere on the airport's 2,400 acres: on the edge of the parking garage, by runways, even perched on control towers bristling with spikes designed to keep all birds off.

Why do snowy owls like it here? The wide-open spaces and low-cut grass make it seem like home. Their favorite meal - a small rodent called a lemming - doesn't live anywhere near Boston. But the owls find plenty of other small rodents, namely meadow voles (a cousin to the lemming) and urban rats.

Not even the thunder of 1,000 planes taking off and landing daily deters the owls. While they do have extremely sensitive ears, Smith says they must get used to the noise the same way people learn to ignore traffic noise in the city. Smith fondly recalls observing one particular owl that catnapped all day in the middle of the airfield, completely unfazed by planes passing overhead. (Smith wears earplugs at the airport most of the time.)

Letting the grass grow longer at Logan might keep away a few snowies. But Smith says that nothing - not even paving the airfield completely - would make this or any airport completely bird-free.

That's why Smith is good to have on hand. He drives around the airfield in his pickup until he spots an owl. Then he'll park and set up his trap about 100 feet away. He uses a live mouse in a wire cage to lure the owl into the trap. A long string runs from the trap to his truck.

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