Cool Down

The past week we have had really warm weather here. Warm weather is nice, but it also means mosquitoes galore. Although I have enjoyed the little bit of summer weather, it was nice to have a break from the bugs today. It was in the low 40s all day with a moderate wind. A very welcoming cold and a very successful work day.

I am enjoying being up here and most of the work. It is interesting to work on a new project that could mean big things for wildlife conservation in the Arctic. But, it just makes me realize how much I like banding and real (not artificial) nest monitoring; since I am not really getting to interact with the birds at all. The artificial nest project has been interesting but exhausting. Yesterday, we spent the whole day checking our second transect of nests that we set-up on the haul road. It is a lot of stop and go and walking. But, today took a total turn for the better.

We started by doing area search surveys on the rehab pads that are the furthest west from our camp. I started walking out to the pad when I spotted an Arctic fox in the distance. It spotted me, and started walking towards me. It got within 2 feet or so of me and sniffed the air around it. I backed up and it walked forward. I was a little concerned it could be rabid, but I didn't notice any behavioral signs that it was. So I decided to walk back to the truck to get my camera and maybe get some pictures of it. Needless to say, it followed me to the truck. I am not sure if maybe it behaved this way because it may have previously been fed by a human or if it was just very curious. I feel it is more of a case of the latter. Luckily, it stuck around a bit longer and I got some pictures.

Fluffy little bugger.

Checking me out and sniffing the air. 

Checking out the truck. 

One successful wildlife encounter, leads to another. The area search surveys are mostly for nest searching. As I said before, we don't have any nests on the pads except for a few Semipalmated Plover nests, only one of which we had found on the last search day. So we were geared up to find the other plover pair nests, and did! My first nest find of the season! At least the first nest that counts for something and that wasn't just found from walking to and from our study sites.

Cute little plover nest.  Water droplets are from floating the eggs
to determine the age and predict hatching day.

At another site, I found another plover nest that was not on the official rehab site. Yet, I count it because the nest is on a pad that is connected to our site and will be rehabbed this year. This is also the site with the catastrophic amount of debris all over the place. Apparently, it does not bother the semi plovers. This is also where I have seen a Snowy Owl and we saw two here today! No good pictures of them since they are pretty skittish and will fly away when you are too close.

Plover exhibiting "broken wing" behavior in order to protect the nest. 

2nd plover nest of the day. 

Semipalmated Sandpiper nest found walking to site.
For comparison to Plover nest. 

Towards the end of the day, we had some really dense fog settle in. We had one more site to do when it got pretty thick and it was quite amazing to experience it while working out on the tundra.

Erica walking out into the fog. 

I tried to capture it on camera but they don't really do it any justice.

Fog outside our camp. 

Good old "Betsy" hanging out in the fog.

I am sure that this is horribly written, my body and mind are really tired, but I had to share this tonight!