Arctic fox and floating rocks
We've rounded the three week mark in our field season, and it's been a great start. We've captured five wolverines so far, two of whom are recaptures from last year, and have been spending a fair bit of time following them around the tundra, trying to find snow-holes. In the process, we've stumbled across a number of other fascinating happenings. Here are a few:
Arctic fox encounter. Two days ago, we made a rare trip about 40 miles south, into the heart of the Brooks Range, to visit a cluster where Walnut (a male wolverine) had spent three straight days. I had originally thought that he'd dropped his collar, actually, based on how little he moved from this single location (<about 20 meters in 72 hours). It turns out he was at the carcass of a bull caribou. The carcass was buried under the snow (so it likely died in the fall or early winter sometime), and Walnut had excavated a long, shallow tunnel from the carcass to a 1m x 1m cavern about 3 meters away. It appears that he sat in his little hole for those three entire days, munching contentedly away.
When we showed up, an arctic fox greeted us. We approached slowly, and it eventually permitted us to "share" the carcass with it; we took some pictures and investigated the site while it was still right there, munching away.
Floating rocks. While we were returning to camp, we were riding along a frozen river and came to a spot where the ice was clear enough to see to the substrate below. The riverbed consisted of cobbles - rocks around 15-30cm in diameter, and some of them were suspended in the ice a foot or two above the bed! It was extremely cool, like suspended animation, and I can't for the life of me think of how it would happen. Any ideas?
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