His job renting kayaks to paddlers on the Chicago River got Cass Cwik into birdwatching.

He’d see great blue, green and black-crowned night herons, cormorants and “a lot of interesting birds you don’t see walking the streets,” Cwik said. “You start noticing every bird that isn’t a pigeon or a house sparrow.”

It was McHenry’s snowy owl that prompted Cwik to write a song in the raptor’s honor.

“I was driving on the highway and it came to me,” said Cwik, a Crystal Lake native and singer-songwriter now living in northern Indiana. He’d been following the bird as it was posted online and news stories were written about it.

[ See more photos of the snowy owl in McHenry last year ]

“It was a riveting story and easy to put to song” in the tradition of Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, Cwik said.

The McHenry snowy owl first showed up in a field south of town in early December 2024 and became a social media sensation. Cars parked along the road as photographers and birdwatchers vied for a look at the visiting bird and its photo was shared across platforms.

The owl – a male believed born that summer – was found dead Dec. 17 after colliding with a car overnight. Later testing done by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources showed the bird was malnourished and possibly had pneumonia when it died.

Snowy owls are born in the summer above the arctic circle. As winter approaches, some young birds fly south to find hunting grounds and head back north in late spring, according to Project SNOWstorm. The Pennsylvania-based nonprofit tracks the birds as they migrate south and back again.

Bird watchers and environmentalists encouraged those going to see the McHenry bird give it plenty of space – a request that was not always followed.

That attention and its affect on the owl are what Cwik‘s song, “Snowy White Owl,” centers on, with the lyric: “He moved to the suburbs until he went insane, cameras are flashing and cars on the road, like a funeral procession of what was to come.”

This season, a pair of snowy owls have been spotted on Chicago’s shoreline, near the Montrose pier. Access to the pier has been temporarily closed to protect the raptors.

“Help give the owls a warm welcome to Chicago by being respectful and giving them space. Please stay a minimum of 300 feet away from snowy owls,” according to the Chicago Park District’s Facebook page.

“Snowy White Owl” the song appears on the Cass Cwik Stringband’s album “Throop Street Blues.” The song can be found on his @CassCwik YouTube channel, and on BandCamp.com.