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this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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For owls that are superb.
US Wild Animal Rescue Database: Animal Help Now
International Wildlife Rescues: RescueShelter.com
Australia Rescue Help: WIRES
Germany-Austria-Switzerland-Italy Wild Bird Rescue: wildvogelhilfe.org
If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
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Also, I guess I don't know enough to say for sure that it will return near enough to exactly where it used to be. Is that typical migration habit for snowy owls?
Snowy migration is a bit irregular. They don't even always do it every year. Sometimes they'll go to/from the same place, but not always. They're nomads and just kind of follow food around.
They get studied a good bit, including by Project SNOWstorm, which tracks Snowies specifically. Lots of work is being done to find out who goes where, when, and why.
Owls are really fun because they're an animal we feel we should know a lot about (who doesn't know what at least 1 owl looks like?), but since they hate people, try to be invisible, live in hard to get places, and mainly travel at night by flying, they've been really hard to track and study historically, so there is still so much we have to learn about them compared to many animals we're familiar with. More taditional methods like banding are still a great source of info, but now we have better cameras, drones, gps, night vision, and computers. Even things like BirdNET Pi can help find these invisible but vocal animals. It's a great time to be an owl fan!