I’m almost 75 years old and only now have seen a snowy owl. I’ve had two definite and one possible sighting.

The first was three weeks ago when I saw a raptor in a small, bare tree. I didn’t realize it was an owl until I looked at it through a telephoto lens. I didn’t know what type of owl because it had too much brown on its body to fit my idea of what a snowy owl should look like. When I got home, I checked “National Geographic Birds Of Eastern North America.” My first identification was barn owl, but I was unsure. Northern Wisconsin is hundreds of miles north of barn owl range and the color on the bird’s body was brown, not the orange/brown of a barn owl as shown in the book.

A week later I was in the office of a state park to purchase my annual park pass. There I saw a stuffed, snowy owl that was a dead-ringer for the owl I saw. I rechecked my bird guide and saw something I had missed. Snowy owls have distinctive, yellow eyes; barn owl eyes are brown. The bird I saw had yellow eyes. I now am certain that I had sighted and photographed a snowy owl.

Last week I saw another snowy (perhaps the same one) flying and managed to get some photos. Again, the yellow eyes indicated it was a snowy. A few days later, I saw far away what I think was a snowy. Based on it’s hunting behavior I thought it could only be a snowy or a northern harrier, a type of hawk. I could see through my binoculars that there was a lot of white on the bird, so I think it was another snowy owl, but it was too far away for a confirmed sighting.