Weather.com-March 15,013-Steve Karnowski
Volunteer Claire Palmer holds a great horned owl, Wednesday, March 13, 2013, at the Raptor Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS -- It's been a tough winter for owls in parts of North America, and the evidence is turning up on roadsides, at bird feeders and at a wildlife rehabilitation center in Minnesota.
The dead, injured and sick owls are symptoms of what ornithologists call an "irruption," a natural, cyclical phenomenon that happens when hungry owls that normally winter in northern Canada head south in search of food - either because their normal food of mice, voles and lemmings are in short supply or heavy snow cover makes it difficult to hunt for small rodents. Other irruptions have been reported recently in New England, as well as southern Ontario and Quebec, and parts of British Columbia.
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