I recently wrote – or perhaps you could say vented – about our recent forays into birding. With an additional morning under my belt, I’ve had a bit of time to reflect. Perhaps birds aren’t so bad after all.

1. Birding is cool.

By cool, I mean cold. Birding is still definitely not trendy cool, but right now I’d happily embrace an icepack wearing socks and sandals. Kluane is melting under a heat wave, and in the full blast of the sun we are getting baked from the lakeside to the alpine. The bird surveys, and the early mornings that come with them, are a welcome relief.

2. Birding is peaceful

Our surveys last 30 minutes at each site. Here in my field assistant role, my responsibility is simply to record any new bird calls we hear. As Matt’s identification skills improve, there is less and less for me to do, and more and more time for me to do what I like best – perfecting the art of the tundra nap. It is incredibly peaceful drifting off to sleep to the rustle of the willows, the distant wash of waves on the lake shore, the buzz of pollinators, the soft tweet of an unknown bird call….oh wait! Damn, where is that recorder!!

3. Birding is exciting

There is a certain thrill to coming across a new species, or getting that perfect photo you’ve been waiting all morning for. Sometimes the surprises are small – a colourful bird settling in the shrub above your head. But as Cameron found with the hummingbird on Qikiqtaruk, you never know what you may see!

A grey jay (Perisoreus canadensis) supervising our common garden experiment

Ptarmigan chicks are excellent at camouflage and will stand very still as you walk past them

4. Birding is interesting

For all their skittishness, and the whole moving around thing, things that aren’t plants can sometimes be interesting. Even though I’ve walked up and down the Plateau many times now, seeing the drop off in bird diversity with temperature – in the data and with my own eyes and ears – is neat, and a nice little test of theory.

5. Birding is beautiful

Once again, no explanation needed.

By Haydn

It’s been a fairly uneventful first week at Kluane Lake, our research site in the south of the Yukon. Despite a major plane delay (but who doesn’t love sitting on the runway in Gatwick for five hours right?) we all made it out exactly to time, Tony Grabowski’s poor Corolla laden down to the ground along the hot and very dusty Alaska Highway.

This year we are at a new camp – Outpost Camp – a charming cluster of old log cabins that seems to have been built by the Yukon itself. Varnished decking sits beside old ramshackle cabins, roofs still mostly secure, insides mostly abandoned. Rusting signs for root beer hang alongside shining solar panels; tins of paint are stacked beside sleds and moose antlers.

Ground squirrels scampered across the dust and the aspen whispered in the still air as we walked over to unpack into our new lab space. A huge old cabin, rooms spilling over into yet more musty rooms, we had plenty of space to ourselves and before long the shelves were neatly ordered with zip-lock bags and gardening tools, sampling equipment and coin envelopes, bug spray and bear barrels. It looked brilliant. Alas, overnight we were raided. I returned to find the contents scattered across the room, through the whole cabin-complex, and out into the trees. It turns out that ground squirrels have a real taste for teabags, and, it seems, boxes of matches!

Since then we have been trying to get on top of the science here. Haydn and Izzy are continuing to maintain the common garden experiment down by the lakeside, and are also setting up phenocams and collecting samples up on the Kluane Plateau. Matt is conducting bird surveys up the mountainside, and Cameron is looking at the transition from trees to tundra. The team have also looked at herbivory up the mountain, collected Cassiope samples for genetics work, and tracked a trailside coloniser. The highlight has been hanging out with our resident caribou at the top of the Kluane Plateau, who certainly seems very interested in our science!

Field planning under way

Learning the ropes

Christophe the caribou

At the bottom of the hill things are jolly as ever and we are enjoying spending time with Sian, Lance, and the rest of the comers and goers in this part of the world. We enjoyed a festival of rugby at the weekend, receiving more cuts and bruises from a mighty three-way tournament on the lakeside than anything the mountain has given us so far, followed by a feast of a whole pig spit-roasted over an open fire. It felt a little primal butchering it up on a big plywood table and then attacking with hands, forks, knives, teeth, anything that could get a hold.

As for now, the sun is up and the heat of the day is setting in. The dust from the Slims River is rising, and the whirr of the propellers is starting up across at the runway. The ground squirrels are still scampering and the aspens still whispering, and my radio is buzzing to tell me to get back to work. Better not keep those willows waiting.

Haydn & Team Kluane

“Help!  I am tangled up in the plot!”  Said Isla as we were hiking our way out to Collinson Head to start the most exciting part of our field work data collection all summer – the point framing of the long-term monitoring plots. That entanglement – from which Isla was soon rescued – was the inspiration behind the title of this blog post.

It was a long stretch of hot days, almost as hot as the hottest day of the year, when, amidst the buzzing of mosquitos and boat noises, dramatic words echoed through the tundra – hour after hour, one could overhear: “Three live, two standing dead”, “Salpul, seven point four”, “Wait, how many were dead?”, “Four dead.” The soundscape of point framing!

We have been going back to the same 1 x 1m plots on Qikiqtaruk for six years now – half of the plots are in the Herschel vegetation type, and the other half in the Komakuk vegetation type. The communities there are very different, as we previously pondered in our first book club blog post after we started reading Mark Vellend’s “The Theory of Ecological Communities”. We have kept up reading the book in between fieldwork this summer, and point framing in particular has been a thought-provoking companion to our reading. We will be posting our second book club post soon, but until then, grab an imaginary pin flag, and picture yourself in the tundra landscape as we share with you our impressions from the 2017 point framing season.

• Interestingly, we recorded 32 species in both the Herschel and Komakuk plots. Even though observed species richness is the same, the identity of the species and their frequency in the two vegetation types are very different.
• The Herschel vegetation type, where one can often find patches of moss in between the cottongrass tussocks, is much more pleasant for barefoot walking than the Komakuk vegetation type, where there is an abundance of spikey dead flower stalks of grass species! The mosquitos had scared us off from kicking our shoes off at first, but the heat finally convinced us to throw our cares and socks to the wind.

  

• We are very thankful for iPads and the Numbers app! We collected over 4200 rows of data, entered straight into the iPad, which means we don’t have to spend weeks digitising it from fieldbooks! We can now load our data right into R and analyse it when we get back from a day in the field. For anyone reading this post who hasn’t yet switched over to digital data collection – make the switch now, it will change your life!
• We looked over the data from previous years and checked out what interesting things were “hit” with the pin flag – a spider, some caribou poo, little pools of standing water and more. No wildlife touched our pin flag this year, but there were still plenty moments of excitement. For example, amidst walking between the plots, I spotted the biggest Salix arctica leaf I’ve ever seen, measuring at 11.4 cm! There were beautiful patterns of moss and Peltigera lichen patches, which inspired us further – point framing is very repetitive, so anything to break the sequence of dead and live Eriophorum leaves is exciting!
• We also conducted a new protocol – the International Tundra Experiment species pool protocol, which I was most excited about. Point framing is great, and it’s even better when you combine it with a survey of what plant species are present in the area around the plot! We walked in bigger and bigger concentric circles, starting from the center point of our plots, till we reached a radius of 100m, which is pretty far when you are walking in circles to get there! Then we recorded each new species, the distance at which it was found, as well as its vegetative and reproductive height. This is the best kind of treasure hunt – biodiversity monitoring! We have been dreaming of species-accumulation curves ever since, and once our data and graphs make it off the island, we shall be sharing those with all of you!

  

• We were surprised to find so many different plant species – within a 100m radius of the plots, we identified 66 species for Komakuk, and 55 species for the Herschel vegetation type – currently only 32 of them are present in the plots, and we can’t wait to see if and how selection, dispersal and drift change the plant composition in the future.  New species could disperse into the plots or species might disappear by random chance or because they are out competed by other faster growing plants! Community ecology is so exciting!!!

In summary, for four days, our lives were indeed tangled up in plots, but what a great tangle to be in! We will be sharing graphs and more thoughts on community ecology in the Arctic in our next book club blog posts, so stay tuned.

By Gergana

This year we have been conducting bird surveys on the Kluane Plateau, the flat patch of tundra jutting above our field base on Kluane Lake. It’s the first time I have been involved in bird-based fieldwork. Trudging up the mountain earlier even than the sun does, I’ve had time to realise why I joined Team Shrub, and not Team Sparrow.

1. Shrubs are stationary

Shrubs are always there. They’re reliable little fellows, sitting quite peacefully on their little patch of soil. You can go up to a shrub, pat it on the head, give it a little hug… whatever floats your boat. Shrubs don’t care. You can come back the next day, the next day, the day after that, hey we come back year on year! Our favourite shrubs are still sticking around, stoically soaking up the sun and the storms and the deep snows of winter. Choose a shrub – they’re always there for you.

Birds are flighty little things. You never know where you are with birds: swooping up the mountainside without a care in the world, no regard at all for scientific process. One day you’ll be beset by bird calls – your recorder runs out of memory and your camera runs out of batteries. The next day you just sit in silence for half an hour. Unreliable, inconsistent, fickle: the life of a birder.

2. Shrubs are obvious

Shrubs stand out. They hold up their branches to the skies as if to hail their own existence. They rambunctiously rustle their leaves and provocatively shimmy in the breeze. They’re grandiose, with the gravitas of a tree but with grace of a gazelle, pointedly yet politely waiting for your arrival on the tundra with all the proper respect that a plant, and only a plant can show.

Birds are downright antisocial. They’re the conversation that stops when you walk into a room. They’re the cool kids that drift off when you join the party. Birds wait to catch you unawares before bursting forth in a cacophony of absurd twittering, knowingly timing their chorus for the moment your recorder times out. Giggling childishly, they watch on as your sleepy fingers fumble with record button and camera lens. As soon as you’re ready, planned and instantaneous, the din shall stop and off the birds shall fly in gleeful silence, disappearing to their hiding places under the obvious shrubs.

3. Shrubs are straightforward

Shrubs are the solid, down-to-earth types you want fixing your car. Shrubs call a spade a spade, even if they’re not always the spade’s biggest fan. You don’t even have to ask a shrub its name – they stand around wearing nametags, offering up their identity as a simple introduction. Although there are some characters out there who like a little mystery, some pretence (and even some cross-dressing), they are more than happy for you to take their business card away with you, with a few extra leaves thrown in, just to check up on them in the morning. Pleasant and simple, shrubs do what they say on the tin.

Birds are dirty tricksters. They dress up in different colours, and put on different clothes. The teenagers, as teenagers do, wear strange and often drab outfits, and the children sometimes don’t go out at all. Half the time half the birds seem too busy trying to impress the other half, and the other half the time they’re still not interested in your science experiment. As for singing, birds would do well to learn their tunes and stick to them. I simply can’t stand improvisation. It seems that birds just cannot appreciate that the more they fool around the longer we will be pouring over identification books and churning through endless lists of their pointless calls. Birds should pull themselves together.

4. Shrubs are restful

Shrubs know the meaning of a full night’s sleep. They’ve read the health books. They’ve ditched the coffee. They know the agony of the new parent, the red-eyed commuter, the burnt-out scientist after a long day of fieldwork. Shrubs need no watches, and have no alarm clock. Shrubs work on your schedule, meet your deadlines, put up with your missed appointments. Shrubs wait for you.

They say the early bird catches the worm. Well, birds must bloody love worms. Up, often before the sun, and letting the world know about it. If you’re not up for their 6am meeting, sweaty and blurred, dusty and aching, bruised and bleeding, then too bad for you. Birds are ravers, Glastonbury stop-outs worshipping the dawn before crashing into a stubborn stupor for the rest of the day. Birds are the boss from hell and the teenage dirtbag, all rolled into one.

5. Shrubs are beautiful.

I need no explanation here. Just look at this beautiful willow in the sun. Birds got nothing on that.

And you know what they say. You can’t polish a Turdus.

By Haydn

Ricky Joe is a park ranger on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island from Aklavik, NWT.  Here he shares his perspectives on life in the Arctic, working on the land, and the changes he has observed on Qikiqtaruk.

The first time I came to Qikiqtaruk I was 17 or 18. I was travelling and hunting. Back then, there was no park established yet (1978) – there was a lot a char and herring, and people came here for sealing as well. The Mackenzie family were living on Qikiqtaruk. Their children were born and raised here. Most often I came here alone, but I wasn’t scared. You really have to watch it when travelling alone, but when I was younger, I made sure to be there to learn from my dad and uncles, to always follow them and help. I got the basics from them, and then I took it another step further and tried to improve.

There is no sense of time when you are travelling around here – you need a lot of patience. You need to know where and when to stop, when it’s safe to move on. Now everybody is always in a hurry, people travel to places quickly, but don’t get to fully experience them. There are journeys that used to take us days when I was little, and today we can travel to those places in hours. But you still have to remember to really experience the place, to stop and take it all in. My family and I, we just love travelling. It’s hard to say what we love about it – everything. The openness. We have all been travelling since we were very little. I was always with my grandmother and her dog team, helping her, hauling ice for fresh water and hunting.

It’s important to have a connection between the generations. To show children the land, teach them how to travel, how to deal with the weather, teach them the language. My grandparents originally came from Alaska. I used to speak Uummarmiut with my grandmother, but we are losing our language and I kick myself for forgetting words. Now teachers are supporting children going out to the land, there are language classes and drum dance groups. My grandchildren are probably better than me in my language. Culture, dances and stories are coming back to schools, to people’s lives as well.

When we’re not travelling, a lot of times we’ll get together, have supper and just tell stories. Everybody would chip in and we’ll all share stories – that’s how we learned about our culture and land. We try to make everything from the land. We share stories about where you see certain animals, how to survive here and be safe. Some people like to keep information to themselves, but I like to share. I know how to travel in the delta and mountains in all seasons, and when I am available, people call me when they need help to find lost people. Everybody knows each other in our community, and we always try to help one another.

I’ve always chosen jobs that are out on the land – animal surveys for beluga whales and grizzly bears, wildlife and environment monitoring, being a guide. I’ve also travelled to teach – I loved travelling to different communities, learning about their livelihoods, and teaching them the basics for how to work with tourists – we were learning off each other and sharing. When I first heard about the park ranger job, I knew I wanted it. I started working as a ranger in 1999, and I really enjoy working out here on Qikiqtaruk Herschel Island Territorial Park. All my previous skills – how to read weather, travel safely, monitor animals, interact with tourists – are useful for the job. I just love being here, and meeting different people – tourists and researchers, that’s my favourite part. Learning different things and increasing my knowledge, too. It’s so peaceful here, but it can also be hard – leaving your family for two weeks or more at a time.

I enjoy meeting people, talking to people. The people that come here are most interested in our lives, what we do, where we are from, the animals they can see here and our stories. We tell them about our work here – for example, the Qikiqtaruk Ecological Monitoring Programme. We do bird surveys, we monitor permafrost depth and changes in plant phenology – the timing of when plants leaf out, flower and disperse their seeds. The raptor survey takes us on a good long trip around the island – all the parts of the island are different in their own, especially the exposed north-west side, which takes a beating from the weather. From the surveys we’ve learned that the raptors are building their nests along the coast, but the nests are collapsing into the ocean. It must affect their populations down the road, and it also throws away the balance between species. There are cycles in the populations of voles and lemmings, some years we see more, others less. We haven’t seen a snowy owl on the island yet this year.

People are concerned that Qikiqtaruk is changing. It’s very different to what I saw when I first came here when I was 18. When we go home, we tell people about the changes we’ve seen on Qikiqtaruk over the years, about climate change. There is pollution from rubbish washing on the shore. There are different animals and wildlife coming – things we never saw before, like the hummingbird Cameron saw. There are different seabirds, eagles. I’ve seen otter tracks around the island, a moose and a beaver – those were never here before. Everything is changing – more extreme weather, higher waters, bigger winds. Some years, people at Shingle Point can’t hunt and support their livelihoods because it’s too windy. The changes are impacting people’s lives. Our collaboration with researchers helps us learn more about those changes – people in our communities appreciate seeing the products of the research, the reports, but also getting the chance to meet the researchers in person and ask questions. We learn from one another, and sharing our knowledge is important. But how to fix climate change is another thing, it takes the whole world to fix those problems, not just the researchers and communities of the Yukon North Slope.

By Ricky Joe, Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island Territorial Park Ranger

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You can read another guest blog post by Yukon Parks Ranger Edward McLeod here – Qikiqtaruk perspectives by ranger Edward McLeod.

“I feel like we could be sharing stories for hours” said Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island Park ranger Ricky to me one evening after we had chatted about our homes and cultures out on the rangers’ porch. I walked back to Signal’s House with a smile on my face, hoping that we would continue the conversation. Time has passed since that evening, we have shared more stories, and on a rainy day like today, it feels like just the time to tell you one more – a story about stories.

I grew up in a place where every patch of land, every object and every dent in the house walls has a story behind it. Some of them I was fortunate to hear from my grandparents, others I could only imagine. Back home, everybody talks about villages like mine, Tyurkmen, in past tense – stories full of nostalgia about everything villages used to be and everything they are not anymore. Such stories could easily wrap you up in the past, cast a shadow over your attitude towards the present – many villages are now abandoned, traditions are lost, stories are forgotten. Some say villages will never again be the rich cultural centre they once were.  Even if we hear about old traditions, we don’t always engage with them.

Villages like Tyurkmen are torn between tradition and modernity

Gergana, the author of this post, collecting wood in her Bulgarian village

There are still, however, days when people take out their old traditional clothes, full of colours and intricate embroidery, and gather to dance together to the rhythms of bagpipes, accordions, drums and flutes. My favourite part comes later in the celebrations when we share stories late into the night – some we hear every time, others are new. I love them all. Listening to them, sharing them, writing them down. I think that the best kind of stories need little embellishment from the truth, for there are so many incredible places, people and events all of them worthy of being remembered. Of course, I love to read great works of fiction, but for me those cannot quite compare to the power and privilege of hearing a story first hand from people who hold those stories dear to their heart.

Here on Qikiqtaruk, stories are a constant part of our daily routine: stories of past adventures of the field team: “Did I ever tell you about the time that the bowhead whale came into Pauline Cove… or when the radio got lost out on the tundra and we tried to use the drone to find it…”. Stories about the past and present life on the island from the rangers. Stories about the findings of our research. Fieldwork and stories tend to go hand in hand – funny stories liven up those moments when no field plan seems to work, and evenings after a day’s work can quickly go from quiet to lively chatter. Stories are how we communicate both our daily lives and our science.

From one end of the world to the other, stories about how the world around us is changing and about the connection between people and land make me feel at home. Some of those stories have been scientific stories: a clear structure, many numbers and frequent reminders of why those numbers are important. Scientific stories take many shapes – journal articles, reports, presentations, computer code, blog posts and more. Just like a good story, a good scientific paper takes you on a journey through what we know, what we don’t know, and what it all might mean. Sure, there might be more graphs and less pictures than your usual story, but as a whole, scientists are professional tellers of very precise and accurate stories about how the world around us is changing and what that might mean for people and places.

Villages like mine, Tyurkmen, are changing, and so are communities all around the world. Ecosystems are changing, too. A story that is happening right now out from the Arctic tundra of Canada to the abandoned agricultural lands of Eastern Europe. Perhaps it is in sharing our stories of the past and present, be it through numbers, pictures or words, that we can better understand processes of change around the world and what they will mean for all of us now and in the future. As the day is coming to a close here on Qikiqtaruk, I feel happy and privileged to hear stories about the island’s heritage and to be able to collect information on how Qikiqtaruk’s environment is changing – a new story in the making.

By Gergana Daskalova