This video from the USA says about itself:
Snowy Owls lead nomadic lives and travel vast distances from year to year searching for productive feeding areas. Some years, most recently in the winter of 2011/2012, conditions cause them to come south in great numbers.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Reblogged this on Ann Novek–With the Sky as the Ceiling and the Heart Outdoors.
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Bird count finds unusual number of snowy owls migrating from Arctic
By Sean Myers, Calgary Herald March 22, 2012
CALGARY — The Great Backyard Bird Count, an annual tally of avian trends across North America, has turned up some unusual migrations this winter.
In particular, observers in Canada saw four times the number of snowy owls moving south from the Arctic than last year.
This is because lemmings, which snowy owls hunt, were very scarce, forcing the birds to fly south in search of food.
Calgary naturalist Gus Yaki, who leads bird watching expeditions in Fish Creek Provincial park and around the city, said a huge influx of snowy owls has been seen in southern Alberta and across Western Canada
“There’s thousands of them,” said Yaki. “Unfortunately, they’re skin and bones by the time they get here because they had to fly over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) of boreal forest, where they couldn’t hunt. A lot of them are dropping when they get here.”
The backyard bird count is jointly run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the National Audubon Society and Bird Studies Canada. The counts were conducted by volunteers, Feb. 17 to 20.
Participants in Canada and the United States noted 17.4 million bird observations on 104,000 checklists identifying 623 species.
There were 9,800 checklists submitted by Canadians, with 88 coming from Calgary.
Yaki is not involved in the backyard count, but does participate in the annual Calgary Christmas Count and said more tallying means better accuracy, especially when it comes to noting species that are endangered.
“They are helpful in determining important trends,” said Yaki. “The more the better, because you can’t really make a judgment from one snapshot.”
smyers@calgaryherald.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Bird+count+finds+unusual+number+snowy+owls+migrating+from+Arctic/6345445/story.html#ixzz1pvklERGn
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