“Is This AI?”
Once the images reached a larger online audience, a predictable debate followed.
Could the bird possibly be real?
Photographers today face a challenge that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago. An extraordinary wildlife photograph can go viral almost instantly, but the same technological environment that spreads the picture also encourages skepticism.
AI image generators can produce imaginary animals with realistic feathers, lighting and backgrounds. Digital editing software can alter colors in seconds.
An orange snowy owl therefore seemed almost designed to provoke suspicion.
Maggert said that her photographs were not AI-generated and that the owl’s unusual coloration had not been artificially added to the images.
More importantly, this was not a mysterious animal documented by only one person.
Other observers and photographers had seen and photographed the owl as well.
Project SNOWstorm, a research initiative devoted to understanding snowy owls, publicly addressed the unusual bird in January 2025 after photographs began circulating.
The organization made clear that the owl existed and appeared to have been coated or stained by some type of orange-red substance.
So the central mystery changed.
The question was no longer whether the orange owl was real.
The question became what had happened to it.
A Color Never Seen Before
Even researchers with decades of experience studying snowy owls found the photographs extraordinary.
Denver Holt, director of the Owl Research Institute in Montana, told reporters that his organization had studied snowy owls for more than 35 years, located more than 300 nests and banded more than 800 chicks.
Yet researchers there had never encountered anything resembling the Michigan owl’s coloration.
That observation matters.
Wild animals sometimes display unusual pigmentation. Genetic mutations can alter the production or distribution of pigments, occasionally producing animals that are unusually pale, dark or differently colored.
Birds are no exception.
That made genetics an obvious early possibility.
Perhaps Creamsicle possessed some extraordinarily rare mutation affecting feather pigmentation.
Kevin McGraw, a biologist at Michigan State University who studies animal coloration, discussed the possibility that unusual pigment expression might have been triggered by environmental conditions.
One pigment of particular interest was pheomelanin, which produces reddish and yellowish tones in many animals.
Could the owl somehow be producing a pigment it normally would not express in this way?
It was an intriguing possibility.
But other experts looking carefully at the photographs were skeptical.
The Genetic-Mutation Theory
If the owl's orange color had originated inside its feathers through an unusual genetic or physiological process, researchers would expect certain patterns associated with feather pigmentation.
Instead, the photographs appeared to show something different.
The orange coloration seemed to cover portions of feathers that would ordinarily have been white.
Scott Weidensaul, an ornithologist and co-founder of Project SNOWstorm, argued strongly that the appearance was inconsistent with a genetic mutation.
Project SNOWstorm also addressed another possibility: scientific marking.
Decades ago, researchers sometimes used conspicuous color marks to identify birds from a distance. Before GPS and modern tracking technology became available, researchers studying snowy owls in Wisconsin during the 1960s used spray paint as part of efforts to understand winter movements.
Modern snowy owl research, however, generally relies on far more sophisticated tracking techniques.
Project SNOWstorm stated explicitly that it had not colored the Michigan owl.
Researchers working with relocated owls at some Canadian airports may use small, controlled spots of dye to help identify an individual if it returns, but those markings are nothing like the extensive orange-red coloration visible on Creamsicle.
That left accidental exposure as an increasingly important possibility.
Something, somewhere, may have stained the owl.
But what?
The Airport Theory
One hypothesis soon attracted considerable attention.
Aircraft de-icing fluid.
Airports in cold climates routinely use de-icing and anti-icing products to remove or prevent dangerous ice accumulation on aircraft. Some formulations can be brightly colored, helping ground crews distinguish different fluids and monitor where they have been applied.
Certain fluids have red, orange or reddish-orange appearances.