LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The snowbirds are heading north again. And no, this is not about the Canadians who winter in Florida. Snowy owls fly south from the Arctic to spend the winter at a Boston airport.
NORMAN SMITH: You know, Logan Airport is an area that is 1,800 acres of short-mowed grass that looks very much like the Arctic tundra.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Norman Smith studies birds like the snowy owl that catch prey.
SMITH: They actually eat a lot of ducks and rodents that are on the airfield. So there's plenty of food, and it probably looks more like home to them than anyplace else around.
INSKEEP: Smith started volunteering with the organization Mass Audubon in 1966, and today he conducts research on raptors for the organization.
FADEL: And he's become an expert on the Logan Airport owls. Smith says that before he got involved, the airport had a very different way of dealing with the birds.
SMITH: The FAA made it mandatory that airports have to create a bird patrol, which keeps airports bird-free or as bird-free as they can. And the goal and objective back then was to shoot birds that were on the airport because, obviously, you don't want a bird to get caught in an engine of a plane.
INSKEEP: In 1981, Smith wrote a letter to the airport asking if he could take a different approach, a more humane approach.
SMITH: I started going out there and studying the snowy owls and then trapping them and removing them from the airport for the safety of the owl and for the safety of the aircraft there as well. And I've relocated over 900 snowy owls, so far, from Logan Airport.
INSKEEP: Amazing. The birds are usually released far away from the airfield, in Cape Cod or the North Shore. Smith is the only owl catcher at Logan Airport, although other airports are following his lead.
SMITH: We wrote a protocol, which was adopted by the USDA, and that protocol was to live trap and remove birds, which was accepted at most of the airports, you know, throughout the United States, now in Canada.
FADEL: Right now is about the time of year when the snowy owls start to fly back to the Arctic. They usually return in the fall, and Smith plans to greet them at the airport again when they do.
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