Beautiful driftwood carving of a Snowy Owl mom with her baby chick snuggled close. Measures 20 x 15 x 6, priced at $395. Excellent painted details.

The snowy owl is a nomadic bird, rarely breeding at the same locations or with the same mates on an annual basis and often not breeding at all if prey is unavailable. A largely migratory bird, snowy owls can wander almost anywhere close to the Arctic, sometimes unpredictably irrupting to the south in large numbers. Given the difficulty of surveying such an unpredictable bird, there was little in-depth knowledge historically about the snowy owl’s status. However, recent data suggests the species is declining precipitously. Whereas the global population was once estimated at over 200,000 individuals, recent data suggests that there are probably fewer than 100,000 individuals globally and that the number of successful breeding pairs is 28,000 or even considerably less! In North America, the breeding range has been known in modern times to include the Aleutians and much of northern Alaska. In recent years, a snowy owl visited Seattle for some time, and can be regularly seen in winter in the Skagit Valley of Washington State’s northwest corner.