Spring has arrived here at squirrel camp and it's pretty exciting! Chipmunks are up and running around all over the place, the ground squirrels are also out and there’s one that’s living under the data hut. The snowshoe hares have started to change colour and are mottled looking right now, with brown fur coming in on their backs and the white winter fur still on their legs and feet. Bear tracks have been spotted on Agnes but no one has seen any bears yet. More birds have arrived in the area including yellow-rumped warblers, varied thrushes, white-crowned sparrows, and buffleheads have been seen on Sulphur pond. Lots of raptors have been spotted lately including bald eagles, red tailed hawks, harriers, and goshawks. A large porcupine has been roaming around the huts in camp. Almost all the snow has melted and even the mud has mostly dried up. A few mosquitoes have been seen flying around, but they’re not a problem yet. Juvenile red squirrels have started to emerge from their nests on all of the food addition grids, and they seem to be running around and rattling all over the place. The May midden census is in full swing, and the crew has been assessing the activity and conditions of the middens on each grid as well as trying to determine which squirrel owns each midden. The crew went on another short hike along the Alsek valley last week. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and the highlight was seeing a moose swim across the river.
JKS


Blog photo 1: A vigilant least chipmunk


Blog photo 2: The squirrel camp crew hiking along the Alsek valley


Blog photo 3: A snowshoe hare with its summer and winter coat


Blog photo 4: A juvenile red squirrel eating a spruce cone

We did another peanut butter addition to the experimental grids starting on April 17. It was the second PB add for the core field crew, and it went much smoother than the first one we did when we arrived at camp in March. There was much less peanut butter spillage this time and the cookshack stayed remarkably clean, and no one had got really covered in peanut butter either. We heated the cookshack up to a sweltering 35C to pour out the PB. It was almost like having a sauna right in squirrel camp! Putting out the peanut butter in the buckets on the grids also went really well and it was all done in two days.


Stirring the PB – Dieter, Bastien, Krystal and Beth stirring the peanut butter in the steamy cookshack.


Pouring the PB - Beth, Dieter, and Krystal pouring the liquidy peanut butter into yogurt containers.

Lots of nests last week, but we're still not at the peak. That will come this month as Kloo, Sulphur and Chitty ramp up and coincide with Agnes's, Lloyd's and Joe's nest 2s. Julia and Jamie did 6 nests on Lloyed one day (1 in the morning 5 in the afternoon) and then Julia and Kate pulled of 5 nests the next day spread across two grids. 5 nests in an afternoon might be a record.

Beth and Dieter return from nests on Chitty.


Crystal climbs for pups on Agnes.

Agnes pup


Mom moving a pup to a new nest.

-Ryan

A Lynx joined me in watching a mating chase today. It just sauntered up and sat down about 15 yards from me and went into stealth mode. Sat motionless for about 45 minutes with it's eyes closed but it's ears were busy listening to every sound. The squirrels barked for a while but eventually carried on almost like normal, but they were pretty cautious about going near the ground. I got pretty excited a few times when one would stray close, but they never got close enough for the lynx to strike. I think I was probably cramping the lynx's style, as I couldn't stay nearly as still and was constantly turning around to look at squirrels, and it shot me a few looks to say as much. The lynx would just aim it's ears towards the squirrels and very slowly turn its head (with eyes mostly closed) when they approached. Eventually it gave up and took off on its usual loop through camp.

The aloof cat stare, telling me to quit fidgeting.


Lynx sat like this for a long time, eyes closed and ears perked.


A yawn, just before taking off.


Lynx have serious reach.


Check out the size of those feet!

One last look at the meals that could have been.

Lynx are showing up everywhere this spring. We've been seeing fresh tracks every day Lynx every other day. There is some speculation that the lynx are extra hungry because the snowshoe hares are in decline, but I'm not so sure. In any case it's exciting sharing the grids with the big cats.

Lynx on Kloo

Still a few hares around, actually I haven't really noticed a decline.

The other day I stumbled upon a lynx eating a squirrel! I was radiotracking a Kloo female (to see if she was in estrus) and she led me right to the lynx. Turns out she was in estrus today and the unlucky male was likely distracted by that.

"What squirrel?"

I think that's the liver, anyone know why the lynx would leave it behind?

Female squirrels come into estrus for one day and spend the whole day leading what we call a mating chase. The males involved in the chase seem to turn off their predator avoidance (Sara even had one run up her leg) so it's not too surprising that the lynx was successful. Also, the night before we had about 3 inches of snow which slowed the squirrels down a lot. They look a little like otters swimming through the powder.
After the lynx finished off the male it took off towards the negatives and found Abe and the mating chase that he was following. Abe had lost the female for a minute and by the time he found her she too had been caught by the lynx! The females are usually more cautious so I'm a little surprised that she was nabbed.

Radio collar untouched. Lynx ate the liver this time but left an arm?
-Ryan

Hut Crawl last night was fun and then this morning a mating chase, no rest for us.

Winter crew decked out in their finest. Abe, Sara and Ryan.


Dieter and his squeeze box.

Beth and Dieter playing some cajun music.

Crystal and Abe


Julia, Beth, Dieter and Sara
-Ryan

When I try and describe Squirrel Camp to people who haven't been there they always want to know what people do on those long snowy nights in the winter. Here are a few of the things that folks have been up to this spring.

Group crosswords by the Coleman lantern.



A musical jam with Elsabe from town.


Wearing crazy home-made glasses and drinking tea.


Sitting around after dinner and just smiling!


Watching TV in the kitchen - actually it is a mating chase going on outside the cookshack, which is even more interesting.



-AMc

Well the 2008 season is now fully underway as the new techs for the 2008 season have arrived and are now learning the ropes at Squirrel Camp. This year we have 6 core crew members from California, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and Michigan. Pictured from left to right below are Krystal Tangen, Julia Shonfield, Dieter Weise, Beth Kolb, Bastien Ferland-Raymond, and Cate Brown.

The crew is now out and trapping a small number of middens on their own. This involves setting and checking of live-traps, handling squirrels in specially designed handling bags, weighing the squirrels and putting unique coloured wires in their ear-tags so that we can recognize them from a distance. Picture below are Beth, Bastien and Cate on their first day of trapping on their own.


Beth weighing a squirrel.


Bastien handles a squirrel.


Cate trapping.

Sadly we missed the lunar eclipse due to unusual cloud cover. Bummer. While the Chickadees had a snowflea feast they weren't' sated and continue to rob our traps. They don't take much with each visit, but over a few minutes they pick them clean (like piranhas). They are so bold that they start before we're even a few meters away. The Jays also are a menace, but not as frustrating because they get caught more often.

Chickadee swoops

Brazenly enters the trap

Steals some peanut butter

And is off

It has been very warm lately, swings into plus degrees daily and a low of about -5ºC. Pretty strange for the Yukon in February. The warmth must have caused a snow flea population boom as they can be found just about everywhere you look. Hopefully the Chickadees will be busy eating them and not robbing our traps.

First Nest!
First nest on Agnes, R/Y T.7 D8886/F0205. Three female pups and two males.
This is the earliest birthday ever recorded in Kluane! Certainly an effect of the food addition experiment, still we were caught by surprise. We weren't expecting any litters for another two or three weeks but now it looks like Agnes will be in full swing come early March.



Sara reaches into the nest

The first pup weighs 9.7 grams, just a day old.


Day old pups are blind and hairless, but they will grow up to be pretty cute.

Sara weighs another pup.

After returning the kids to their nest, mom moved them to another nest.

Re-caught the accelo-equipped squirrel. Logger still in place and squirrel seems fine!
After trapping we went down to the Arctic institute for a moon-lit sauna and had the place to ourselves. Tomorrow we are planning an early ascent up towards the Nipple to get a view of the sunrise (early isn't so bad up here as the sun rises at 9am).
-Ryan

The logger is still in place!

Another warm day. Good trapping success 10 squirrels by Sara alone (Abe and Ryan got some too). Abe collars alone... Ryan goes to Whitehorse to meet Murray for doubly labeled water (not sure why they need to meet in a bar...) Abe and Sara hold down the fort and are preparing for checking on 16 ladies in the morning (for chases). Heard coyotes on Agnes.
-Abe

After trying various configurations over the last couple of days I've figured out the best way to orientate the accelerometer loggers so that they stay out of the squirrel's way. So, without much fanfare, the accelerometer equipped squirrel was released into the wild today. It performed a little bronco action and then ran underground and made a lot of noise (scraping the collar on the tunnel?) but resurfaced will the accelo still in place and proceeded to eat a mushroom. Hopefully it will be fine overnight and I'll trap it tomorrow to be sure it's alright.
-Ryan

I'm pretty confident the logger will stay on the back of the squirrel, but I'm crossing my fingers anyways.

Almost died from heat exhaustion today -9ºC when we got back from trapping on Kloo. Checked on the ladies of Agnes and Kloo but no chases. Unfortunately only 8 squirrels today.
A poetry reading and whiskey tasting in the evening.
Freaky weather -6ºC at 11pm?
-Abe

February 1st

An interesting town-day indeed! Frisky temperatures in camp precipated an early departure and an extensive odyssey for the rest of the day.
Squirrelers dropped in on Mike (ie: the mechanically inclined Mike) without an old generator to fix, just for some conversation and so Mike could laugh at us again. We admired the heat output of his garganuan woodstove, and took in advice on avoiding catastrophic chimney fires ("I have a chimney fire everyday" ... Mike loads up an inferno each morning and cleanses his chimney that way; sounds good to us). We also discovered that the public library has wireless internet, making it that much cooler a hangout.

Our faithful trio, supplemented by thCurrently listening to:
e Alaskan boyfriend (aka: John Boswell), attended a Scottish dinner in honor of Robby Burns at the residence of the friendly Elsiby. We participated in preparing the Haggis, the "King of Puddings", minus the sheep entrails, and tasted a fine variety of scotches and met some nice people who live in the Junction and had a merry time in general.

To top off the day, Aurora in the way home yielded a celestial finale to our day of rest.

-Abe

January 27
Whew, really cold last night. The low was about -36ºC and in the morning our propane stove wouldn't work. Luckily the propane furnace heating the data hut worked fine all night (maybe because the cylinder is right up against the outside wall?). We went trapping when it warmed up a bit but had no luck. Lacking propane, we improvised and turned the wood stove into a tandoori oven and made some excellent naan.

D'ecoli peak at 10am

D'ecoli at noon.


Abe cooking up some tandoori chicken.


Perfect Naan