EARTH · GLOBAL BIRD MAP · MIGRATORY
Snowy Owl
Bubo scandiacus. The white owl of the high Arctic tundra that irrupts south in some winters. Pooled openly through GBIF, the Snowy Owl has been recorded 287,835 times across 59 countries — most often in United States, Canada and Sweden. The map above glows where those records cluster. It’s a known long-distance migrant, but the map shows records, not the journey — no routes, no arrows, no live position.
Counts are GBIF occurrence records published under CC0 or CC-BY only (the openly-reusable subset), so they are a floor, not the full holding — and they track observer effort, not just the bird.
Where it’s recorded most
The countries contributing the most openly-licensed records of the Snowy Owl. This leans toward nations with many active birdwatchers and open data — it is a map of records, not of where the bird is most abundant.
How to read this map
Each bright cell is a cluster of times someone recorded a Snowy Owland shared it openly — a birder’s checklist, a photo, a museum specimen. It’s a real trace of the bird’s presence, but not a range map: the glow also follows where people look, so well-birded regions shine and quiet ones fade even if the bird is there. Because the Snowy Owlmigrates, its records can span continents across the seasons — but this is a pooled all-time snapshot, so it shows the full footprint of sightings, not a moving front or a flight path. There is no LIVE badge: the figures are a snapshot dated 20 Jul 2026.