Over the ten years of filming the Harry Potter series, seven different snowy owls were cast to play Hedwig, Harry Potter's feathered mail-courier and companion. While J.K. Rowling wrote Hedwig as a female owl, most of the birds cast were male because female snowy owls have more black markings than their pure white male counterparts. Snowy owls have thick feather coats to protect them from Arctic temperatures, making them one of the heaviest owl species in North America. Even their feet are covered in feathers, like little fluffy slippers.

While most owls are nocturnal, the Arctic summer forces snowy owls to hunt by daylight, making them diurnal. They have powerful wings that allow them to silently sneak up on prey, and they eat small animals such as lemmings. Lemming populations fluctuate dramatically, and in years when they have population booms, snowy owls can raise double or triple their young. In a single year, a snowy owl can eat 1600 lemmings.

Snowy owl sightings date back to cave paintings in prehistoric Europe. If you're trying to spot one outside the Arctic, you may have some luck in snowy, wide-open spaces. What looks like a patch of dirty snow might actually be a snowy owl hiding out to stalk some lemmings. Every few years, snowy owls will fly way farther than their usual range, in a phenomenon called irruption. This may be due to an abundant baby boom, leading to increased competition for food. Owls may travel from the arctic circle all the way down to southern Canada and the United States during one of these great migrations.

Learn more: All About Birds, For the Birds, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

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