On these nights, a male boreal owl has been singing from a wooden owl box near our home. The late biologist Dave Klein attached the nest box to a black spruce tree north of the University of Alaska Fairbanks ski trails many years ago. In search of a mate, the owl sings his haunting little […]
Just beneath the owl box, hung 20 feet up the stem of a balsam poplar, the backyard barbeque continued late into the evening. Despite the thwap of badminton birdies and the chirp of human voices, the boreal owl had work to do. With a vole in its talons, the hand-sized bird perched on a branch […]
All of a sudden, we are again the land of no night. Summer happens every year, but it is always a surprise. Maybe because winter is the normal state of middle Alaska, with a white ground surface possible from late September until late April. Over the years, I have marked this frenetic, green time by […]