Magic of the Snowy Owl

A wonderful hour-long video of Snowy Owls is now available online or through your PBS station.  I set my DVR for 5:00 AM tomorrow morning — check your local listing.

Watch Magic of the Snowy Owl Preview on PBS. See more from Nature.

Magic of the Snowy Owl premiered Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings)

Throughout the long months of the Arctic’s frozen winter, the sun remains below the horizon. The cold is intensified by the darkness, making life difficult, if not impossible, for all but the toughest and most experienced of animals. Snowy owls are built for the challenge, their every sense and skill honed to take on the eerie, bleak world. When the brief Arctic summer approaches, bringing light back to the tundra, snowy owls embark on an even more daunting challenge than keeping themselves alive. They breed and attempt to raise young in one of the harshest environments on the planet. Once summer arrives, they will have just 82 days of sunlight to successfully raise a family of helpless owlets until they are ready and able to fly. Documenting the degree of difficulty involved in those efforts, a team of filmmakers must face some challenges of their own as they set out to record the rarely observed daily lives of a breeding pair of snowy owls.

You can watch the full video here.