The midnight wildlife was out in force last night. A light rain and cool weather was welcomed by all. Only one of the northern flying squirrels came in to the feeder — Half-Tail, the more beat-up-looking one. Even alone, though, she (and I’m guessing on sex here) did some acrobatics, climbing high up the side of the house and flying out to Bird Tree before returning and sitting on the bird feeder by the window.
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Category Archives: Natural history
There are Strange Things Done ‘Neath the Midnight Sun…
…by squirrels and thrushes having their fun.
So, a fish lands in a parking lot…
…and this is a joke whose punchline has yet to cross my threshold. In an incredible ongoing saga, yet another animal engages in one-upmanship in Fairbanks and STEALS THE SHOW!
The Home, It Groans
We’ve had an unusually warm winter – until now. It’s hit the 40s (below) finally. The air is unbelievably crisp, reminding us what living in Fairbanks is all about this time of year. It’s a great time to get things done inside, that’s for sure. All systems are working well; the boiler comes on frequently and the wood stove is stoked and radiating very welcome heat.
Thinking about polar bears
It has been unseasonably warm here in Beringia so far this winter, with temperatures up into the 20s and even 30s—above zero! It has also been unseasonably dry, with very little snow so far. It makes you wonder about climate change and how it might affect us at a local level.
While I was out splitting wood, my mind was wandering, as usual, and I remembered that polar bears diverged from brown bears a long time ago, and that polar bears had survived through the last interglacial period, which was warmer than this one (so far). In refreshing my memory, I (re)learned that polar bears split off from brown bears about 600,000 years ago and actually survived through multple interglacials. The last interglacial (we’re in one now, the Holocene), was called the Sangamon interglacial or the Eemian. It was about 130,000-115-000 years ago and was perhaps the warmest of the interglacial cycles experienced by polar bears. That interglacial period was warmer than today, and it is considered that the polar ice caps melted—the Arctic Ocean probably only had ice in the winter.
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