Snowy Owl
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40 free Snowy Owl trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The snowy owl is one of the most recognizable birds on Earth, a big white hunter built for life at the top of the world. It copes with cold that would kill most animals, raises its family on open tundra with no trees for cover, and wanders huge distances in search of its next meal. This quiz turns the best snowy owl fun facts into questions. You will meet the owl's favorite prey, its unusual hunting hours, its showy courtship, the tricks parents use to protect their chicks, and the surprising places these birds turn up in winter. A few questions cover the snowy owl in books, art and local symbols. The early questions suit kids and curious beginners, and the later ones will test keen birdwatchers. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which small rodents are the snowy owl's favorite food, with one adult eating over 1,600 a year?
Lemmings
Lemmings matter so much to snowy owls that a pair may not nest at all in a summer when the rodents are scarce.
Q 02What name does Harry Potter give the snowy owl he receives as a birthday gift from Hagrid?
Hedwig
Hedwig is a female snowy owl in the books, and a famous piece of the film soundtrack, Hedwig's Theme, carries her name.
Q 03At what time are snowy owls often out hunting, a habit that sets them apart from most owls?
In broad daylight
Snowy owls often hunt in broad daylight because the summer sun never sets where they breed in the Arctic.
Q 04Where does a snowy owl mother make her nest and lay her eggs on the open Arctic tundra?
On the ground
On the ground, usually atop a low windswept mound with a clear view, the mother scrapes out a shallow bowl and adds no lining at all.
Q 05What color are the eyes of an adult snowy owl, standing out sharply against its pale face?
Yellow
Yellow eyes help make the snowy owl unmistakable, and they are sharp: experiments suggest the bird can spot prey from about a mile away.
Q 06Snowy owls have been seen trailing which Arctic hunter to scavenge the leftovers of its kills?
Polar bear
Polar bear kills are not the only free meals a snowy owl will take: the birds also pick at dead reindeer, walruses and even whales.
Q 07Which busy man-made places attract wintering snowy owls because they resemble flat, treeless tundra?
Airports
Airports offer wide grassy strips full of voles and rats, and Logan International in Massachusetts hosts snowy owls almost every winter.
Q 08In which US state alone do snowy owls nest and raise chicks rather than just visit in winter?
Alaska
Alaska is the only US state with breeding snowy owls, which nest on its far northern tundra and on a few remote Aleutian islands.
Q 09Which Canadian province chose the snowy owl as its official bird in 1987 to symbolize its winters?
Quebec
Quebec knows the bird by its French name, harfang des neiges, and two other Canadian provinces also picked owls as their official birds.
Q 10How does the plumage of a young male snowy owl usually change as the bird matures?
It turns whiter
It turns whiter with age, though the change is slow: some males may not reach their palest plumage until they are nine or ten years old.
Q 11Which part of a snowy owl is covered by feathers longer than those any other owl grows there?
Toes
Toes on a snowy owl wear feathers about 33 mm long, more than twice the length of the runner-up's, like a pair of built-in snow boots.
Q 12What do snowy owls cough up about a day after a meal, packed with bones, teeth and fur?
Pellets
Pellets pile up by the dozen beneath regular perches, and biologists pull them apart to learn exactly what the owls have been eating.
Q 13The rough territorial call of a male snowy owl is most often compared to the sound of what?
A barking dog
A barking dog is the usual comparison, and over the open Arctic tundra the call carries more than three kilometers, perhaps as far as ten.
Q 21Which egg-stealing mammals of the tundra do snowy owls sometimes turn the tables on and eat?
Foxes
Arctic foxes, both pups and adults, have been taken by snowy owls, even though these animals may be the worst thieves of their eggs and chicks.
Q 22What do Arctic geese and ducks gain by nesting right beside a fierce snowy owl pair?
Safety from predators
Safety from predators comes at a price: the owls drive off egg thieves, but they sometimes eat their neighbors and the neighbors' young too.
Q 23In a crowded snowy owl nest, who sometimes keeps the newest hatchlings warm besides the mother?
Older siblings
Q 14Which trick do snowy owl parents use to lure a prowling predator away from their chicks?
Faking a broken wing
Faking a broken wing, with thin squeals and a staged tumble from the sky, once drew a researcher about two kilometers away from a nest.
Q 15What color is the fluffy down that covers a snowy owl chick for most of its first weeks?
Dark gray
Dark gray down soon replaces a chick's first whitish fluff and camouflages it against the lichen-covered tundra.
Q 16How do snowy owl chicks leave the nest at about three weeks old, long before they can fly?
By walking
By walking off on foot, the chicks can hide among nearby rocks and plants, a move thought to make them harder for predators to find.
Q 17Why must a snowy owl swivel its entire head, up to 270 degrees, to look to the side?
Its eyes cannot move
Its eyes cannot move because they are fixed in bony tubes, so the owl relies on 14 neck vertebrae, twice as many as a human has.
Q 18What do birdwatchers call a winter when snowy owls pour south in unusually large numbers?
Irruption
An irruption usually follows a bumper nesting summer in the Arctic, and the one in 2013–14 sent snowy owls as far south as Florida.
Q 19Which snowy owls make up about nine in ten of the birds seen far south in big invasion winters?
Juveniles
Juveniles dominate because these flights follow summers of unusually successful nesting, which leave the Arctic with a surplus of young owls.
Q 20What do some snowy owls perch on through the Arctic winter while hunting seabirds far from shore?
Sea ice
Sea ice gives the owls a perch beside polynyas, gaps of open water in the frozen ocean where seabirds are thought to be their main prey.
Older siblings sometimes end up sheltering the youngest chicks, and unlike many owls, snowy owl nestlings are not known to attack one another.
Q 24Snowy owl parents have attacked which large grazing animal, probably to stop it trampling the nest?
Caribou
Caribou are harmless grazers, yet nesting snowy owls dive at them anyway, and in one place the owls even went after farm sheep.
Q 25In which part of the world does the snowy owl outweigh every other owl species that lives there?
North America
North America has no heavier owl, but in Europe the snowy owl ranks second, and a few Asian and African owls outweigh it as well.
Q 26Which feathery head feature, obvious on many big owls, is so tiny on a snowy owl it looks absent?
Ear tufts
Ear tufts on a snowy owl are only about an inch long and made of roughly ten small feathers, raised now and then by a mother on her eggs.
Q 27The bouncy, fluttering courtship flight of a male snowy owl is often compared to which insect's?
A moth
A moth is the usual comparison: the male bounces through the air on slow, exaggerated wingbeats, often with prey dangling from his bill.
Q 28Which hunting style did snowy owls use in about nine of every ten winter hunts watched in New York?
Sit and wait
Sit and wait is the snowy owl's standard method: the bird perches motionless on a post or rise, then launches a sudden, fast dash at its prey.
Q 29Which naturalist gave the snowy owl its first scientific name in the 1758 Systema Naturae?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus was fooled by the bird's variable plumage and described it twice, as if it were two separate species.
Q 30Which artist painted a male and a female snowy owl for Plate 121 of The Birds of America?
John James Audubon
John James Audubon had all 435 plates of the book printed life-size on sheets more than three feet tall, so even this big owl fit the page.