June 29 - wolf encounter

Gray Wolf surveying his domain

Today was official rope drag day for the second time, after doing it just for fun yesterday. Scott, Laura, and I dragged the 7s today, finding only three phalarope nests, and later I got a Red-throated Loon and Pectoral Sandpiper – but I failed at locating a Semipalmated Sandpiper nest, so my final total stands at 19 days in a row. I guess I should have gone to the 3s where they found four today!

This Freija Frittilary would like to remind you that not all life is birds and mammals up there

The most exciting happening today was while I was going to hatch-check a nest, so I was separated from Laura and Scott by a hundred meters or so. I was walking along and happened to be looking down and checking the nest card for the nest I was checking, when I heard a yell coming from behind me: “Wolf!”

The pinkish tones to the belly and forelegs are blood from feeding on a caribou carcass nearby

In front of me, about 80 meters away, was a Gray Wolf, just looking at me. I dropped to my knees in the hope that I would be less menacing and it would get closer, and right on cue it approached until maybe 15-20 meters before it caught my scent, stopped short, and stared. After a short period of looking at each other, the wolf started calmly loping away, glancing back at me occasionally as it departed the area and was lost to sight over the hill. A truly awesome experience.

So lanky and lean, with a blocky head and build that means business

On a contrasting low note though the nests that we checked today that were supposed to hatch were all predated by a fox overnight, eaten the day before they would have been chicks. Devil fox.

June 28 - first hatching

Caribou herd from camp, a common sight

My day off today – slept in until ten and it was amazing. No other way to put it. Had some pancakes for brunch, entered some data since the sun ended up coming out, and then had a nice relaxing afternoon dragging a 50 meter long rope for about two miles with Scott.

Rope dragging is quite an effecting way to nest search on flat terrain, but more effort than just walking. We found three nests including my daily Semipalmated Sandpiper – 17 days in a row of finding a Semi Sandpiper nest now! We are over 250 nests for the season as of today, sadly over half are already terminated due to the predation pressure exacted by the foxes.

One of the nests we found today was of this Red-necked Phalarope - incredibly camouflaged on his nest. Just right of center you can see some rufous coloration, that is his hindneck.

The same male Red-necked Phalarope waiting to get back on his nest

We also, on a brighter note, had our first nest hatch today! A Semi Sandpiper nest successfully hatched four chicks as of today as seen by Brad and Mark -I hope they make it.

Only three more days here for Brad and Mark before they head back to civilization, and it is two thirds of the way through the season for the rest of us. Crazy! I also got word from home that my parents bought a house, and that I will have a minor amount of employment when I get back before school – so today was a good day!

July 27 - caribou trapping

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

June 26 - many nests

This male Pectoral Sandpiper was looking nice all puffed up today

Today I went to the 7s with Elin, but we each brought a gun so that we could split up to be more effective in our work for the day, which we did pretty early on. It ended up being my personal best nest finding day, with eleven nests! The species makeup of the eleven was one each of Red Phalarope and Red-throated Loon, two Red-necked Phalaropes, and seven Semipalmated Sandpipers.

One of the Semipalmated Sandpiper nests

The loon nest was so awesome, on a small island just offshore in one of the large lakes on the study area, and the egg was gorgeous – dark green like jade with black splotches across it. I was also impressed by the size of the lone egg in the nest, about 1/3 again as large as a chicken egg – not surprising seeing that loons are large birds.

That egg is 1/3 again as big as a chicken egg - this is a big nest!

Other cool sights today included three Parasitic Jaegers mobbing a Snowy Owl that was sitting on the ice on Gull Lake, which is still more than 90% iced over. They would arc high up into the air and then come down with a good head of speed, pulling up right before hitting the owl, which would duck at each pass, before it eventually flew off.

I also had a Western Sandpiper, the only one seen on the study area by anyone through the whole season. I was walking along and I heard a call that I didn’t recognize, which after being up there for over 3 weeks was pretty unusual, so I looked up at the sky and saw this bird flying over, and then I saw it land ~300 meters away. I was really hoping it was some rare Asian vagrant, but when I tracked it down I found that it was in fact “just” my first Western Sandpiper on the breeding grounds!

Western Sandpiper, a really gorgeous bird with that arrowhead streaking below

Today was also the day that I got the closest to a Spectacled Eider for the whole season, a female that didn’t seem to mind the strange two-legger clicking away with a camera.

Female Spectacled Eider, showing the female version of the striking head pattern on the males

June 25 - oil, lemming

While walking around on the tundra you often see oil slicks where natural oil has welled to the surface

Today was chilly and foggy in the early morning, a morning that was brightened up bt the pancakes that Brad made for everyone! A nice treat – thanks Brad!

Scott and I then headed out plot searching the fives, which consists of walking W-shaped patterns across eighty 50m­² subplots – forty walked each. It takes quite a while, but is a rewarding investment! Today it gave us ten nests on plot, and another two just off, totaling a respectable even dozen for the day!

The low point of the day was right after we started, when the rain on the horizon bore down on us with a vengeance, forcing us to walk over a mile back into a cold rain whipping along sideways into our faces due to the 35kt+ winds that came with the inclement weather. By the time we got back we were thoroughly drenched, but the parts that mattered, my electronics, were dry at least.

The view over our tents late in the day when it was nice out - flowers in the foreground!

It is pretty foolish that the primary energy that we rely on for technology, electricity, is susceptible to water, what most of our world is made of. Don’t you think it could have been thought out a little better before basing our whole world on it?

No more rain after we ventured back out post-lunch, and most of the afternoon was even sunny! Highlight of the afternoon was capturing a Brown Lemming, a different species than the usual Collared Lemmings I would catch after dinner under the tents.

The "keeper" Brown Lemming I caught, a majestic creature

June 24 - day off, Brazilian sandpiper

Clouds late in the day combined with a fog bank just behind the tents made for some dramatic scenery

Today was my and Brad’s day off again, a colder day that started off foggy but as I go to bed now you can see the Brooks Range, nice cloud formations, and most of the surrounding world.

Per usual I spent most of the day working on data in excel, fun per usual. Now that we have lots of nests you can do some really cool stuff with the data, such as plotting the day that the nest was initiated for all nests, which shows the distribution of when birds began nesting. This year the distribution is strongly bimodal, with one mountain peak, then a valley, and then another, small peak that echoes the first. This shows the re-nests due to predation by the foxes, with the second peak being the birds that got predated early enough to chance having a second nest.

Scott and I have been talking about publishing the renest data, since it is a rarely described occurrence, and we have seven renests found so far!

A beautiful afternoon, with the mountains lit up nicely in the distance

Slow birding day, watched Mr Brazil a bit but no nest. I think he is chickless in more ways than one.

Current day note: The Brazilian banded bird somehow got glossed over on June 11 when I was writing about camp – since it was the first day I guess I didn’t know what to write about yet.

In any case, the single most significant sighting of the season here thus far is of a Semipalmated Sandpiper that was banded on the coast of Northeastern Brazil this winter, at the end of January. He sports a blue flag with the letters KKL on it, and we have seen him a few times now, always in the same area, but sadly invariably without a lady. 

Note the blue flag instead of the normal green. If you look at the metal band very closely you can see the word "Brasil" engraved in the side

June 23 - wolf!

The wolf can be seen in the center rear here, stalking the caribou that have started to run

Woke up this morning around 7 per usual, still a nice day besides being a bit colder than the past few days. I’m sitting in the cook eating breakfast a few minutes later, and Alan is outside scoping the flats, just a couple hundred caribou this morning. All of a sudden he yells, just one word: “WOLF!”

Instantly there is a mad scramble for the door, we all pile outside, and are soon looking at a lone Gray Wolf stalking the stragglers of a caribou herd, a mile or so away. We got to watch in the scope as it approached the herd, eventually causing them to gallop away, while it loped along behind the fleeing animals. It never broke into a full sprint, more just a test of the caribou’s endurance, to try to single out the weak or sickly. It stopped following after a few hundred meters after cresting a ridge, and with a brief look around, it disappeared from view, never to be seen by anyone else for the remainder of the day. So cool – thanks Alan! He was definitely the hero of the camp that day. Makes you wonder how many have come by without us seeing up until now..

First fledgling of the year was found today - a Lapland Longspur!

Nothing else today was as interesting, found seven nests which brought me up to an even 50 for the season so far! Most of the way was spent hoping for another wolf, since that is what we were all thinking about!

I did finally manage to get a poor depiction of the crazy display of the Pectoral Sandpiper, where the male inflates a huge air sac on his chest and flies around looking like he is about to split apart down the belly.