The snowy owls of the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary had flown the coop. At least, that’s what I heard. My son and I decided to see for ourselves.

I’d been making plans since I first heard the Arctic visitors landed on the shore of Lake Michigan along Chicago’s North Side. I’ve taken my son, now a Chicago Public Schools junior, to the remarkable piece of ornithological green space since he was little. This would be a nice weekend adventure for us, I thought. Some quality time.

But shifting obligations and increasingly busy schedules, the siren call of the couch on a frigid Saturday afternoon, Thanksgiving out of state, all of these things postponed our father-son search for the owls. The thought persisted through the general background noise of life, not to mention the camouflaged federal agents patrolling the neighborhood, the worrying refrain of economic soothsayers, headline hand-wringing over artificial intelligence, the White House consideration of dusting off our nuclear arms for fresh tests. It’s enough to make anyone say, “Forget it. I’m staying inside with a bourbon and watching ‘Stranger Things.’”

But finally, on a recent Sunday, we found the time and committed. I checked with others who had seen the owls for tips and guidance — but they told me the owls were all but certainly gone already.

“We’re going anyway,” I said, pulling my hat down over my ears and handing my son a pair of my old boots because he wanted to wear his Nikes. I was touched to see he’d already grabbed the binoculars his grandparents had gotten him during the pandemic when we first dabbled in birding as a way to get outside and escape the uncertain state of the world. They dangled from a black lanyard around his neck.

The owls landed in Chicago the weekend of Nov. 25, The Associated Press reported at the time. Signage was posted asking visitors to give the birds space. Birders begged one another to stop posting pictures of the beautiful birds online to avoid oversaturating the birds’ space with that dreaded species: the lookie-loo (not including us, of course). When we arrived at the sanctuary that Sunday, I was pleased to see a limited amount of foot traffic. I grew cautiously optimistic. Maybe they were still here. We parked the car by the harbor and walked through the wooden zigzag fencing before stepping into something out of a Robert Frost poem. Black boughs bending under crusts of snow created a daylight-perforated tunnel of soaking bark against the bright blue sky. Little birds, mostly starlings and cardinals, flew in droves and sang to one another.

But, as we were warned, no snowy owls perched on a branch for us to see. We marched through the snow, craning our necks for such comical false alarms as an old dead beehive adorned with a snowcap, a white plastic bag stuck to the arthritic fingers of a leafless tree blowing in the wind and the occasional snowy squirrel’s nest. It was a gorgeous afternoon in an idyllic place — so much so that we almost forgot why we’d come in the first place. We soaked in the majesty of one of Chicago’s oases (it has many) that we all too often might take for granted.

Despite knowing in my heart we weren’t likely to see the owls, we pushed on (maybe sometimes to my kid’s chagrin) and beheld the green and frigid whitecaps of Lake Michigan exploding along the break wall before dissolving into a December mist. An armada of white clouds hung over the lake and downtown’s skyline loomed to the south where the sun broke through the cloud cover.

We ducked down a small trail that would take us back into the heart of the sanctuary when it got too cold out in the open and continued scanning the treetops with what little hope that remained in us.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Dad,” my son said.

Maybe I was the only hopeful one. Just as I was ready to throw in the towel and appease the kid, it happened. An explosion of feathers soared out of the winter brush and flew up to a perch over our path.

It looked down on us with regal disdain.

A hawk. Not an owl. But still a sight to behold.

“Whoa,” my son said, impressed — which immediately made our numb fingers and stinging noses worth it.

I fumbled my phone out of my pocket and took a terrible photo of the hawk. It flew to another branch and then dropped out of sight.

“That was so cool,” my son said.

Yeah, it was.

When we trudged back to the sanctuary’s center, I spoke to a birder in arctic gear carrying a telephoto lens over his shoulder.

“Seen any owls?” I asked.

“The snowies? No, they’re gone,” he told me with an understanding smile. “But they’ll be back.”

From a bird’s-eye view, we probably didn’t look like we were doing much of anything. Just a couple of black dots in a field of white and brown. But from where we were standing, despite not finding Chicago’s most popular seasonal visitors, it was another miraculous day outside — reveling in the search for something that had already come to pass.

Richard Ray is a writer and media professional in Chicago. He formerly was an editor for WMAQ-Ch. 5 and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

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https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/19/opinion-chicago-snowy-owls/