a very broad but patchy wintering range. 1st year birds tend to disperse farther south in winter than older owls with males wintering usually somewhat more to the south than females of equivalent ages, adult females often wintering the farthest north. The snowy owl likely covers more ground than almost any other owl in movements but many complex individual variations are known in movements, and they often do not take the traditional north–south direction that might be assumed. Migratory movements appear to be somewhat more common in America than in Asia. A study of wintering owls in the Kola Peninsula determined that the mean date of arrival of owls was 10 November with a departure date of 13 April, covering an average of during the course of the wintering period and clustering where prey was more concentrated. Some variety of movements recorded each autumn and snowy owls winter annually in plains of Siberia and Mongolia and prairies and marshlands of Canada. The Great Plains area of southern Canada host wintering snowy owls about 2 to 10 times more frequently than other areas of the continent. Some weak correlation has made with individuals having some level of fealty to certain wintering sites. Wintering snowy owls, a total of 419, recorded in Duluth, Minnesota from 1974 to 2012 would occur in larger numbers in years where rats were more plentiful. The amount of individual returns among 43 Duluth-wintering owls was fairly low in subsequent winters (8 for 1 year, a small handful in the next few years, and 9 in non-consecutive years). Sometimes surveys appeared to reveal hundreds of wintering snowy owls on coastal sea ice during an irruptive year. Three siblings that hatched in same nest in Cambridge Bay were recovered in drastically different spots at least a year later: one in eastern Ontario, one in Hudson Bay and one in Sakhalin Island. A nestling banded in Hordaland was recovered to the northeast in Finnmark. In the Logan Airport, 17 of 452 owls were recorded to return, eleven the following year, three 2 years later, and then singles variously 6, 10 and 16 years later. A banded female from Utqiaġvik was recorded to migrate over along seacoast down to Russia, returning over and covering at least in total. Another banded young female from Utqiaġvik went to the same Russian areas, returned to Utqiaġvik and then onto Victoria Island, but did appear