Yearly migration keeps the ‘owl man’ busy at Boston airport

EVERY Winter, Arctic snowy owls fly thousands of kilometres south to Boston Logan International Airport.

- ANDREA SACHS

And every season, Norman Smith drives less than an hour to try to snatch them up.

"I've seen a plane taxiing down the runway and the people looking out and seeing me with a bird," said Smith, 73. "They’re like, ‘What’s that? What are you doing?’"

Known as the “owl man of Logan airport,” the raptor researcher has caught and released into the wild more than 900 snowy owls that decided Boston Logan was their Boca Raton. When the temperature begins to drop, the Arctic raptors, especially the juveniles, migrate to relatively warmer climates. Many choose the airport, home to the largest known concentration of snowy owls in New England. The East Boston site also sits along the Atlantic Flyway, a superhighway for migratory birds that stretches from Greenland to Florida.

With the congested airspace and constant rumble of jets, the airport is hardly a tranquil bird sanctuary. But Smith said the terrain resembles the Arctic tundra. It’s open, flat and barren, with water on three sides and plenty to eat, including waterfowl and small mammals.

The airfield is a dangerous place to alight. A collision between a plane and an owl can end badly for both.

“The importance of Norm coming in is that he helps us take out a significant threat to aviation safety, which is a large, dense-bodied bird on the airfield,” said Jeff Turner, the airport facilities supervisor for the Massachusetts Port Authority.

In 1981, Smith sent a letter to his home airport, asking whether he could study the visiting raptors. He offered to humanely trap the owls. After checking their vitals, conducting a few tests and banding their legs, he would release them farther afield, such as from Cape Cod or the North Shore.