As its name suggests, the snowy owl typically resides in the Arctic. So you can imagine Americans' surprise to spot the white creature along the East Coast and in the south. Are the bird sightings a sign of a bigger problem?

The snowy owl's appearance has shocked residents who aren't used to seeing the wintery bird in places like Atlantic City, New Jersey.

"It's actually pretty special to have snow owls in New Jersey," Donald Freiday, who works for the the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told the The Inquirer in December. "We normally in a given winter will have between none and three. This year, the whole state there are as many as 30."

Most recently, the bird has been causing quite the scene outside of the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge in Galloway Township, according to WTVR.

"Oh, he was turning his head so you could see his eyes looking right at us," an eyewitness told the news affiliate.

Snowy owls' southern migration is called an irruption. Sometimes, an irruption takes snowy owls as far south as the northern areas of South America. This year, however, there has been an unusually large number of the birds seen pretty far south.

According to Larry Clarfield,who works for the North Branch Nature Center, this is because the snowy owls are on the hunt for food.

"So in the Arctic breeding ground, snowy owls like to eat lemmings, and this past summer of 2013, there were so many lemmings in the Arctic that many young snowy owls were born, but once winter came there wasn't enough food for them to stay in the Arctic so we had them moving south in record numbers," he told Inquisitr.

Another reason the two-foot tall bird seems to be plentiful this year, even being spotted in Tennessee this winter rather than its typical Alaskan and Canadian locations according to WTVR, could be that it is searching for different kinds of food. Since lemming supplies are low, the snowy owl could be settling for treats like rabbits, mice and voles.

The fight for the lemming, an apparently delicious small Arctic rodent, could also have pushed the snowy owl south. Arctic wolves, arctic foxes and polar bears also enjoy a good lemming and are obviously big competition for the snowy owl, literally.

The snowy owls will head back north when the Arctic's weather changes again. By then, "the balance of predator and prey is corrected," Inquisitr reports.

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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @SH____4.