The Owl Man of Logan Airport: Norman Smith’s Legend Takes Flight

Dodging airplanes for 44 years on icy runways while braving single-digit temperatures might not sound like a glamorous lifestyle, yet “The Owl Man of Logan Airport” can now officially call himself a movie star.

Ready for his close-up

Norman Smith, 73, a raptor specialist who has worked at Mass Audubon for nearly 60 years and rescued more than 900 Snowy Owls since 1981, is the subject of a short documentary by local filmmaker Anna Miller called “The Snowy Owls of Logan Airport". He is the leading man in the nine-minute-long film, which won the 2025 American Conservation Film Festival’s Audience Choice award and chronicles his more than four decades of rescuing snowy owls at one of the country’s busiest airports, tagging them, and then releasing them to gather valuable data.

And his life’s work is really taking flight lately.

Maybe you saw Smith on television during his Channel 5 appearance. Perhaps you heard him on the radio talking about snowy owls with WBZ. If you missed the excellent local write-up in the Patriot Ledger about his work, then it’s possible you spotted his name in The Washington Post (we’re told he was even a clue in their daily crossword puzzle).

Why Snowy Owls love Boston

All this press and recognition stems from Snowy Owls traveling south from the Arctic and stopping at Logan because the barren tundra of the airport reminds them of home. Which makes sense since it’s 1,800 acres of flat, open space that’s surrounded on three sides by water and food sources.

But, as history has proven, it’s also a dangerous place for the Snowy Owls to call home.

A flock of starlings was sucked into the engine of an Eastern Airlines flight in 1960, killing 62 people in the airport’s most deadly bird strike. Smith has also personally seen a Snowy Owl get sucked into a jet engine that put an entire plane in jeopardy when it had to make an emergency landing.

However, instead of simply shooting the birds on site if they are deemed a risk (like they did in New York as recently as 2013), Smith helped develop a set of protocols to safely remove Snowy Owls using a homemade trap that keeps the owl, airline passengers, and even the mice used as bait, alive and safe.

A Learning Experience

After the birds are rescued and banded, Smith monitors their progress to learn more about their migration patterns, eating habits, and lifespan. Even the two owls that can’t be released back into the wild due to injury get to live at Blue Hill Trailside Museum in Milton where Smith and Mass Audubon staff use the birds to educate the public and get children interested in wildlife and the natural world.

Over the last 44 years, Smith’s children and grandchildren have been an important part of the Snowy Owl Project, assisting with capturing, banding, attaching transmitters, collecting pellets, and releasing them.

His mission is to use the information gathered from his research to stimulate a passion in everyone he meets, especially children, to help us better understand, appreciate and care for this world in which we live.

Congratulations to Norman on a legendary career working with owls and newfound fame on the silver screen.