Bubo scandiacus
Snowy Owls have always been considered to be rare, and irregular, winter visitors to our area. All the nineteenth century and mid-twentieth century sources are in agreement. That status has not changed.
Snowy Owls are residents of the Arctic tundra. Every year, a few drift south, and occasionally they reach our area. Several years can pass without a sighting here; but they have a tendency to stay in one place once they arrive, so that a single bird can produce many sightings by a multitude of birders.
Periodically, however, for reasons which are poorly understood, large numbers of Snowy Owls leave the tundra and move south, in what is called an “irruption.” During an invasion year, multiple Snowy Owls can reach our region. The most extreme example is the winter of 2017-2018.
That winter was regarded as a “mega-irruption” in Indiana, when the largest number of Snowy Owls in a season was recorded statewide (Brock 2018). It was comparable to the largest previously recorded irruption, in the winter of 1905-1906, when somewhat smaller numbers were recorded, by many fewer observers.
In Ohio, there were eBird records from Sharonville and the Banks area in Cincinnati, plus more northerly records from Clinton and Montgomery Counties.
In northern Kentucky, a probable immature male was at the Kentucky Speedway in Gallatin County on December 13, another likely immature male was at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport December 20 through January 2, and a likely immature female was at the same location January 21 through at least February 8, with what was probably the same bird photographed March 6, 2018 (Palmer-Ball, Jr. 2018. All the Kentucky records were accepted by KBRC (Yandell 2019). The fact that Snowy Owl is a review species in Kentucky illustrates how rare it is that far south.