During the past week or so we haven’t gotten any new snow, so the tracks have been building up. Sunrise-to-sunset time is about 5 hours, so there is little daylight during which to see (in real time) who’s been passing. Our resident snowshoe hare has been dashing everywhere. We first saw it in the latter half of October—it stuck out so boldly, white against the snow-less landscape, that we could even see it after dark. This species has only recently colonized our neighborhood, probably drawn by the increasingly open woods as aging aspens have fallen. Until now, we have not had one actually spending time in our yard. It seems to love to run on the deck. Of course we call it Thumper.
Category Archives: Natural history
Fun Guy
We’ve had an extraordinarily wet summer. Earlier this month I strapped on a pair of knee pads and crawled through the woods shooting mushrooms. I’ve just now had the time to go through and choose some of the best images. We sure have a wide variety of fungi here…
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We Set a World Record!
For pollen. From the article:
“Allergy doctor Jeff Demain said Monday’s count shattered the old world record that was set in Sweden several years ago.
“A level of 175 is considered high,” Demain said. “Fairbanks had a birch pollen level of over 4000.””
It’s not just birch, either. Over the course of two days I saw clouds of pollen coming off the white spruce with every puff of a breeze. The deck was yellow with it. We finally got some rain overnight, so things are looking more normal today.
Record levels of tree pollen dust the truck.
Grouse v. Squirrel
We’ve had more Ruffed Grouse activity in the yard this winter than usual. It’s been fun to watch them, and to keep them returning Rose put some sunflower seeds out on the floor of the deck. They appreciate it. Yesterday I watched one slowly amble across the snow in the back yard, gingerly stepping and often breaking through. It did not look fun—basically postholing, which when I have to do it is exhausting. Oddly, when it came across a fallen aspen leaf, brown and ugly at this time of year, it picked it up and swallowed it down. That was a surprise; we see them eat tree buds a lot, but this looked like almost the lowest quality food one could find (one step above spruce needles).
As the grouse slowly approached the edge of the woods, the red squirrel who lives over there went batshit crazy.
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The Light Report
At this high latitude (64.84º N), day lengths are the same as everywhere else on the planet: 24 hours. Night lengths, however, are highly variable during the year. Yes, I am being pedantic, because with both statements being true, that means that day lengths vary too, right?
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