January 2021
Madison Park Times
Serving East-Central Seattle since 1983
Real Estate
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Far from home
Snowy owl in QA facing urban threats By Jessica Keller
Madison Park Times editor
Photo by Jessica Keller Kersti Muul, a wildlife conservationist from West Seattle and member of the Seattle Audubon Society Conservation Committee, examines a bait box placed in an alley in Queen Anne. Bait boxes contain rodenticides used to kill rats but can harm other animals that hunt them, such as a snowy owl that made Queen Anne its temporary home in November or other raptors. Just recently, conservationist found 45 bait boxes in a .2-mile stretch of Madison Park along Madison Avenue.
A snowy owl has become something of a local celebrity in upper Queen Anne, after moving into the neighborhood from cooler northern climes about a month ago. Among the owl watchers, some with tripods and telephoto lenses, flocking to the side streets of Queen Anne Avenue North, are two conservationists, whose interest in the bird stems from concern. Tanea Stephens, Washington State coordinator for Raptors Are The Solution and Queen Anne resident, and Kersti Muul, a conservation specialist, community naturalist and member of the Seattle Audubon Conservation
Committee from West Seattle, have been regularly checking up on the snowy owl since it has made Queen Anne its temporary home this fall. “The environment makes it sometimes risky for her — the urban environment, as opposed to her natural environment,” Stephens said. Muul said the owl was briefly spotted in Burien and West Seattle in mid-October but moved on to Queen Anne in November, where it has stayed since. It is either a female or a juvenile male, based on the brown flecks in its feathers, and came south from its native Artic region of North America, either because prey was scarce or there were too many
SEE OWL, PAGE 2
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