Brad strolling across the tundra
A pretty uneventful day overall,
went out with Brad to the 5s and found three nests. One of the nests was that
of a Dunlin, which is always fun because we don’t get many here, and this one
was particularly interesting because it is due to hatch in three days and had
evaded detection by us until now! Makes you wonder how many we miss.
The crafty Dunlin that avoided detection while having a nest for 18 days
It has been cloudy regularly for a
few days now, so the electricity is running low – no data entry on my day off
tomorrow unless the sun breaks through. Caribou are back on the horizon
numbering in the hundreds, and we saw a helicopter that was looking for caribou
to capture today.
Apparently a guy sits in a harness
on one of the runners of the helicopter, while the pilot flies the aircraft low
down at the same level as the running caribou. When they get near enough to a
calf, the guy on the runner unclips himself and jumps off of the moving
‘copter, wrestling a calf to the ground as they land next to him, and then they proceed
to tag the captured animal. Pretty intense job, definitely exactly like
wandering around the tundra looking for bird nests..except not really.
Parasitic Jaegers are as close as we get to being intense
Although I think Long-taileds might be better
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