As a Massachusetts native, I've been to Logan Airport more times than I can count.

And it's a great airport. It has decent food, a ton of airlines, and best of all, it's just 10 minutes from downtown Boston.

It does have the absolute worst traffic, though.

But anyway, in all those trips to Logan, I always assume that it was just us humans making use of the space sitting on the Massachusetts Bay.

But there's another species that's been passing through the airport for over 40 years, the snowy owl.

In an average year, I catch 10 to 12 snowy owls.

The most I've seen at one time on the airfield is 23.

This is Norman Smith, a fellow Massachusetts native that knows all about the snowy owls

and the way they make themselves at home on the airfields of Logan Airport.

Now let me just point out that snowy owls aren't tiny. They can be up to 28 inches tall

with the wingspan of up to six and a half

feet. That's as tall as probably the nightstand in your bedroom with wings almost as long as a

king-sized bed. So catching this thing obviously isn't easy, but it's what Norman does. He's had a long

career working with Mass Audubon, and today he's a Raptor specialist that has been studying

Snowy Owls in their presence at Logan for decades.

The most I've actually captured in one year was 121. That was in 2013, which was the biggest year for

snowy owls. For the past 40 years, Norman has been driven by his desire to know all there is to know about the snowy owl.

Questions like, what could possibly draw these Arctic dwelling owls to one of the busiest airports in the world?

And why do they continue to return year after year?

What started as a 14-year-old's curiosity about the outdoors and natural history has turned into a career dedicated to researching

the biggest owl in the northeast. And it's annual landing at one of the biggest airports in the

northeast. My name is Baudelaire, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's

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