This snowy owl was recently captured on camera while perched on top of a utility pole just east of Preston on Highway 18.

According to an article in a Wisconsin State Journal last week, "snowy owls rarely seen in these parts are making their way by the hundreds into Wisconsin and other upper Midwestern states as they do every few years, journeying south in search of food from their normal wintering grounds on the Arctic tundra. Such movements, known as irruptions, are often driven by a drop in the numbers of lemmings, small mammals that are the owl’s primary food source, in the remote and far northern regions that are their usual winter haunt. As many as 100 of the birds have been reported across Wisconsin, according to Bill Mueller, an ornithologist who works with the Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory in Milwaukee. Normally, no more than a dozen or so are spotted this far south over the course of the winter.” Mueller said even more of these snowy owls could be seen around until early March if we have a normal winter.