Snowy Owls to Saw-whet Owls with norman smith

Since 1981, Norman Smith has spent countless days and nights, in every imaginable weather condition, observing, capturing, banding and relocating Snowy Owls at Logan International Airport. Data has been collected on roosting, hunting and behavior while on their wintering grounds. Since 2000 satellite transmitters have been attached to owls to learn more about their movements. Find out what has been learned to date, what questions remain and how this project developed to include research on Saw-whet Owls.

Norman Smith is a self-taught naturalist and raptor specialist who has worked for the Massachusetts Audubon Society since 1974. He recently retired as Director of Blue Hills Trailside Museum and Norman Smith Environmental Education Center in Milton, Massachusetts where he had worked for the past 50+ years and has taken on a part time role to continue his research on raptors.

Norman has studied birds of prey for over 50 years, including rehabilitating the injured and successfully fostering over 1,000 orphaned hawk and owl chicks into adoptive nests. His ongoing long-term projects include trapping and banding migrating hawks and owls in the Blue Hills Reservation, banding nestling hawks and owls, and doing research on snowy owls and other raptors wintering at Boston's Logan International Airport. He has also traveled to Alaska to study snowy owls in their native tundra habitat. His research work has been published in National Geographic, National Wildlife, Ranger Rick, Yankee, Massachusetts Wildlife, Bird Observer, Birding, Sanctuary, Geo, Nature, Grolier Encyclopedia, Owls of the Northern Hemisphere and Owls of the World.

His mission is to use the information gathered from his research to stimulate a passion in everyone he meets to help us better understand, appreciate and care for this world in which we live.