{"id":9610,"date":"2012-01-15T01:00:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=9610"},"modified":"2012-01-15T01:00:08","modified_gmt":"2012-01-15T09:00:08","slug":"i-found-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/9610","title":{"rendered":"I found one!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With headlines like “Rare Sightings!” and\u00a0“Snowy Owls Seen As Far South As Oklahoma,” I decided I wanted to find one.\u00a0Popularized by Hedwig in the Harry Potter movies, snowy owls aren’t complete strangers to my region, but this year’s migration has been highly publicized. Taking a tip from a friend, I loaded my camera into my jeep and headed out. Only 15 minutes from my farm …<\/p>\n

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… there he was, sitting on a telephone pole. (Or she. Heavily “barred” and not entirely white,\u00a0I had found either an immature male or female.)<\/p>\n

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She took one look at me and with a wing span of about five feet, off she went.<\/p>\n

My good friend, Brad Halter, an atmospheric scientist, who just returned home from Greenland and has volunteered here at the farm for the past 10+ years (when he isn’t in the Arctic studying the Ozone layer), told me (as he was fussing in our winter greenhouse)\u00a0that a bumper crop of arctic lemmings\u00a0is the reason for the prodigious number of\u00a0snowy owls in our region this winter. With an overabundance of food, the number of hatches that survived were substantial. Hence, their mass migration\u00a0south to find food.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0That’s when I decided the 15-minute drive back to my farm\u00a0(and toward more snowy terrain) was also worth sharing.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0Snowy owls. Snowy horses.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Snowy farmstead.<\/p>\n

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Our one-room schoolhouse where my father-in-law attended school is used now for weddings, square dances,\u00a0and community gatherings. My husband, Nick,\u00a0is the unofficial mayor of Blaine, a unofficial community that no longer exists, although we (my family and neighbors)\u00a0own the schoolhouse officially as part of a legal association that my husband and I officiate. Volunteer work parties keep\u00a0it in working\u00a0condition.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Tomorrow, I’ll take you inside the church that is today’s photo-of-the-day and treat you to more photos\u00a0of my neighbors’ homesteads. Tune in again tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With headlines like “Rare Sightings!” and\u00a0“Snowy Owls Seen As Far South As Oklahoma,” I decided I wanted to find one.\u00a0Popularized by Hedwig in the Harry Potter movies, snowy owls aren’t complete strangers to my region, but this year’s migration has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[115,347,419,641,662],"class_list":["post-9610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geography","tag-brad-halter","tag-geography-2","tag-history","tag-nick","tag-owls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}