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Baird’s Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii)
It bears repeating but one of the biggest advantages of 24 hour sun is you can do things while the rest of the world sleeps. Say its 4:30 in the morning, and you've been hit by insomnia and knowing you have to get up in a couple of hours you give up trying to sleep.…
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Climbing higher
We are less than a week to Summer Soltice and every day the sun climbs a little higher in the sky. This morning at 1:00 it was just about peeking over the hills behind town, due north. Here is what it looked like (rendered in HDR). You'll notice the "Arctic Bay" sign on the bottom…
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Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis)
Late last week I was out at the outflow of Marcil Lake (our water lake), birding at midnight. It was magical, as suddenly most of the species of birds I've been waiting for seem to have arrived up here. In a little less than an hour I saw some ten species of birds, six of…
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Out
I don't get out on the land near often enough, and it seems like I forget just how incredibly beautiful, how incredibly sweeping, how incredibly majestic this land is. Last Sunday I got a reminder. Its funny, but essentially I can be in the wild almost the moment I step out of my door. If…
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Avinga
Avinga is Inuktitut for lemming, and it is also one of my son's names (after an elder not the rodent). Both happened to be out a Uluksan Point last night. We have two species of lemmings here, the Brown Lemming (Lemmus trimucronatus) and Greenland Collared Lemming (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus), and I'm not sure which species the…
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Fog
I love the way the fog often pours over the mountains and hills here. It begs to be photographed. Combine that with an opportunity to take yet another iceberg photo and well…
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A pair of lines in my hands
Daisy was up from the battle school today but I missed him, I have not seen him for three weeks now, that is the longest spell since we joined up, or even before that for a couple of years. He left a snap of my team of greys that had been sent in one of…
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Light
There's been some discussion lately about the 24 hour, or mostly 24 hour sun that we are getting now. Most of it centres around how to sleep during it, or how it is messing up the internal clocks of those who can't sleep during it. I understand, and I've gotten enough first time visitors to…
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Its the end of the school as we know it
There has been a restlessness about town the last few days. Today is the last day of school here and people are rushing around, getting ready to go out on the land. Everywhere you look people are fiddling with snowmobiles, repairing komatiq, hauling equipment down to the ice. There are improbably long lines at the…
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Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis)
