The previous high was 253 in the winter of 2013-'14, said Ryan Brady, bird monitoring coordinator with the Department of Natural Resources.
In fact, more than 200 of the big, white owls have migrated to Wisconsin in three of the last five years, all historically large movements.
"We've gotten pretty spoiled in recent years," said Brady.
By teasing through observations entered on eBird, an Internet-based bird reporting tool hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Brady is able to differentiate sightings of individual animals.
Comment: It's perhaps noteworthy that the standard interpretation for these (increasingly large) influxes doesn't seem to be holding true in recent years - that these invasions occur in 4 year cycles because of successful breeding fueled by periodic high numbers of lemming prey in the Arctic. This cyclic pattern looks to have disappeared this decade, see : SOTT Exclusive: Snowy owls flee northern latitudes for unprecedented fourth consecutive year - Sign of impending Ice Age?