the breeding range has been known in modern times to include the Aleutians (i.e. Buldir and Attu) and much of northern Alaska, most frequently from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Utqiaġvik, and more sporadically down along the coastal-western parts such as through Nome, Hooper Bay, the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, and rarely even south to the Shumagin Islands. The snowy owl may breed extensively in northern Canada, largely making its home in the Arctic Archipelago. Their Canadian breeding range can include broadly Ellesmere Island up to Cape Sheridan, north coastal Labrador, the northern Hudson Bay, perhaps all of Nunavut (especially the Kivalliq Region), northeastern Manitoba, most of northern mainland and insular Northwest Territories (including the delta of the Mackenzie River) and northern Yukon Territory (where breeding is mostly confined to Herschel Island). Since breeding and distribution is very small, local and inconsistent in northern Europe, northern Canada and northern Alaska represent the core part of the breeding range for snowy owls along with several parts of northern and northeastern/coastal Russia. Regular wintering range During the wintering, many snowy owls leave the dark Arctic to migrate to regions further south. Southern limits of the regular winter range are difficult to delineate given the inconsistency of appearances south of the Arctic. Furthermore, not infrequently, many snowy owls will overwinter somewhere in the Arctic through the winter, though seldom appear to do so in the same sites where they have bred. Due in no small part to the difficulty and hazardousness of observation for biologists during these harsh times, there is very limited data on overwintering snowy owls in the tundra, including how many occur, where they winter and what their ecology is at this season. The regular wintering range has at times been thought to include Iceland, Ireland and Scotland and across northern Eurasia such as southern Scandinavia, the Baltics, central Russia, southwestern Siberia, Sakhalin southern Kamchatka and, rarely, north China and sometimes the Altai Republic. In North America, they occasionally regularly winter in the Aleutian island chain and do so broadly and with a fair amount of consistency in much of southern Canada, from British Columbia to Labrador. Recent research has indicated that snowy owls regularly winter in several of the northern seas during wintertime, following the leads of sea ice as perching sites and presumably hunting mostly seabirds in polynyas. In February 1886, a snowy owl landed on