more pix!

so I got back from my first set of site visits on Thursday night and it was excellent. I had a really good time, the weather was excellent almost right to the end and the projects were super interesting, I learned tons of things.

Also I saw lots of wildlife! Here are some pictures!

My first musk ox sighting (yay!) - a herd of about a dozen that we spotted from the helicopter.

This is a caribou we spotted on our tour of a site - he's not very old, probably only a year or two, and he's rather scruffy-looking because they're starting to moult at this time of year.

He just sort of wandered by the truck, not concerned about us at all.

Me at the mine! The haul trucks behind me are ridiculously large and the tires alone are more than twice my height.

Bunny!

Count the ptarmigans! I've come up with anywhere between 14 and 20. I can only spot one adult but there has to be at least one more, I don't think they have more than half a dozen chicks in a season.

This is probably my favourite picture so far. The musk ox near this camp discovered that the grass was particularly green around the greywater drains from the kitchen and showers, so over time they have made their way closer and closer to camp. Now they come in twice a day for lunch, and I think I'm only about 20m away from them in this photo. There were about two dozen all together in the herd and about 5 of them are calves. They are surprisingly smaller than I expected - musk ox are not as big as domestic cows but their coats make them look much bigger.

Yay!

a caribou!

I saw a real live caribou yesterday, yay!


My camera is not so good with the wide shots, though, so that's why there is an arrow pointing him out. If I can get my hands on some of Britt or Gary's pics I'll post a better one.

I also got a nice shot of a raven:


And it was Jeppe and Tom's last day in camp yesterday. They are heading back to school soon, so off they went to spend most of a day in Kangerlussuaq (which apparently has a golf course! so they are going golfing...), and then leave for Copenhagen. Camp has been much quieter without them.
(Britt, Tom, me, and Jeppe. yes, I know, I look even shorter than usual. I'm actually standing in a hole. :P)

I'm back in camp and the weather has definitely turned cold - Lex's mittens came in super-handy, I really didn't think I was going to have to wear them right after I got back! Very glad to have them.

It was snowing yesterday up at the drillsite and the other spot where Brian was out in the field. Then it hailed and rained a bit in camp and I got lucky and snapped a picture of a rainbow. :)

I also had an unexpected visitor to my tent last night in the form of the largest spider I have seen since I got here. I was pretty sure it was on its last legs (heh) as it didn't really move much when I picked it up on a piece of paper, so I took the opportunity to get a couple of pictures of it, and then put it over in a less exposed corner of my tent (the deal being that I didn't put it outside in the 0C temperatures if it stayed out of my hair). About half an hour later I looked over and it was gone, and since I didn't wake up screaming with a spider on my face, I guess it listened. ;)

fox!

I saw a fox last night! It was really neat. I stepped out to take a picture of the sunset and caught a little flick of motion out of the corner of my eye. I moved a bit so I was facing the right direction, and there, about a hundred metres away, was a little dark-brown fox with a white tail. :D He froze when he saw me move, and we stared at each other for a moment, and then he decided that I wasn't really a threat and moved on across the stream towards the tents on the other side. I took some pictures but will have to post them later, as I left my camera back in my tent. There is also some (probably crappy) video, also still on the camera. It's raining today so I'm not especially motivated to run out and get it. ;)