SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — For the first time since 1989, there’s been a confirmed sighting of a great gray owl in Utah.
Bird watchers first saw a pair of great gray owls on Feb. 9 in Morgan County.
A Salt Lake City Tribune photographer snapped a picture of a great gray owl in a tree Saturday in the Morgan County town of Mountain Green.
The avian conservation coordinator for Utah Division of Wildlife Resources says there was a reported sighting of a great gray owl in 1999, but not enough documentation to confirm it.
The bird’s habitat typically stretches from the Teton Range in Idaho and Wyoming across the Canadian Rockies.
Heavy snowfall this winter likely pushed the great gray owl farther south to find food.
The owls eat small rodents.