Blog Hog

That's right, your read the title correctly, I'm being a blog hog on this post. Since I last wrote there has been a series of events that I would like to recollect for you (at least some of them anyways). And since it is pouring, freezing rain and exceptionally high winds outside today I can take some time to do it.

But rain is good! Because we were getting really sad that our pools were drying up. Making them really hard to sample...



First of all I would like to say that something has happened that we were all waiting for. I think you know what I'm talking about.... The Bears. The bears have returned! Thursday we were foiled in our plans to go to our study site and sample because we saw not only one bear but two. Both fortunately and unfortunately they were very far away, so I don't have any photos. But imagine a big white bear walking on the ice...that's what it looked like

When we saw the first bear we decided that it was far enough away and heading in the opposite direction so we could probably work at our site. The second bear we saw was a little closer and down wind so...we went to home hardware instead and then went looking for caribou. Which we ALSO found!


It was an animally day. We were just missing a wolverine.

One of the coolest things about being up here early enough is watching (extremely rapidly I might add) the transition from winter to summer. There really doesn't seam to be a spring. Once it warms up Everything just...changes.

A few days ago we were taking videos of seals on the ice...I hope to post this video but it is being difficult at the moment

A couple days later we got these pictures of the ice breaking up



Notice the itty bitty amanda in the bottom picture.

By the next day the ice was almost completely gone and the bugs were in full force! maybe the temperature today will slow them down a little.




The flowers are starting to bloom everywhere!




And two days ago the weather was warm enough that we actually went swimming! This of course wasn't in Hudson bay...we're just preparing ourselves for the bay dip in t minus 8 days.

This was in one of the pools on our bluff. Not a study pool of course, but the pool we like to call "The Lake" ...original name...we know.





We have a video of this too. We will have to post videos separately I guess.



To back track a little, on June 3rd I was lucky enough to get to go out with a tour guide/birder/local, Paul.


I was able to see a lot of different things. Including birds: white crowned warbler, yellow warblers, red poles, jeagers, tonnes of gulls (we saw them before too by the coast but now I can actually name a couple, such as the bonepart gull and arctic terns). We also saw lots of shore birds: Pacific loons, surf scoter, golden eye scoter, sea ducks, mergansers, phaloropes and lots of others too (I'll have to compile a list). And also there some really interesting birds such as: bald eagles, a golden eagle, a short eared owl, and sand cranes.

The guide also showed us a foxes den where there were three or four pups lounging in the sun. I was able to show these pups to the film crew that I was helping and they are hopefully going to add some footage to their documentary. This pictures a little blurry but there are two little pups in there.

Before the film crew left I was graduated to camera operator for a couple of interveiws. Operating the second camera I had the extremely difficult task of holding the camera still, turning it on...and off, and then at one point I got a little crazy and zoomed in. They may or may not use the footage but hey...it was fun to play with such an expensive piece of equipment. Ingrid seized the opportunity to catch me hard at work.

A couple of nights ago we were feeling a little ancy and made plans to escape from the research station for dinner. We went to the Lazy Bear Lodge with a couple of our new friends. Eating such things as Arctic Char, Caribou and some tasty Bison.

Here's a picture of the bison that Ingrid and I ate



Afterwards we went to Cape Merry where saw some more belugas and a pretty evening sun

We will be trying to catch up with all of the past events as soon as possible, this by all means did not capture everything that has unfolded. Things happen exponentially faster here than normal it seems.