I "arrived at Cape Race road at 8 am. Frequent heavy snow squalls made for interesting dawn light. Owling was slowish at first. I was first on the road so was encountering numbers of owls next to the road on the little grassy mounds created by the building of the road decades ago. Things changed after Long Beach and especially between Cripple Cove Road. Began flushing up many more on the road side. The best hummocks over the land had two or three or even four owls on them. Anywhere you looked you could see them flying low over the barrens. From one spot near the Radar house I easily counted 75 in scan with binoculars. They were everywhere. Because of the glare from looking into the rising sun and the moderate west wind meaning the owls were generally sheltering on the east side of the hummocks, I was waiting for the return trip down the road for the complete count. This turned out to be a mistake because the winds increased to a steady 50 gusting to 80 km. The owls had dispersed a little. Not many multiple owls behind a single mound. Maybe I shouldn't have stayed so long at Cliff's Diner with that extra helping of Sunday dinner and cake and all.
On the way back out the road I counted and came up with 206 Snowy Owls. 126 were between the Cape and Cripple Cove Road, 33 more between Cripple Cove Road and Long Beach and 47 from Long Beach to east of the The Drook. In addition saw four on Cappahayden barrens without even looking for them. Seems there was a new fallout migrating owls overnight perhaps triggered by the cool WNW winds. Cliff noted a significant increase of owls around the light house. You could see 15 from his bathroom window without using binoculars."
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