BY DAY
Adult male northern hawk owl is active during the day.
For a few weeks I have been photographing a pair of northern hawk owls that have nested in a stand of tall white spruce. Hawk owl populations are cyclic and for the past three years they have been rare in my part Alaskan interior. Over the past twenty years, I have been trying to capture their little known life history. In those twenty years I have found only six or seven active nests. Continue reading
Alaskan flying squirrel peers out of an old northern flicker cavity just as darkness sets in.
Northern flying squirrels are more common in Alaska than most realize. They are found in coastal rainforests as well as the boreal forests of the interior. Flying squirrels are nocturnal thus rarely seen. I began to see them as I photographed the nocturnal activities of a pair of nesting boreal owls. As it turns out, boreal owls and flying squirrels share the same habitat preferences. They seem to prefer the big white spruce stands that grows along streams and other places where permafrost is not close to the surface. They share these places with the red squirrel. Red squirrels are active during the day and flying squirrels are active at night. But in the far north where it does not get dark for a several weeks during the summer, their activities overlap. Flying squirrels nest in abandoned northern flicker nesting cavities or other natural hollows.