Yukon Twitcher
@yukonbirder.bsky.social
"it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world". - excerpt of Mary Oliver's poem, Invitation 📌 Whitehorse, YT
I love that the size of a ground hornbill nestbox is essentially a small shed. #ornithology
FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology@africanornithology.bsky.social · 2w agoArtificial nesting sites (nestboxes) can boost breeding opportunities for the Southern Ground-Hornbill. In South Africa, nestboxes increased the number of breeding groups, revealing their value as a conservation tool where natural nest sites are scarce. doi.org/10.1017/S095... #AfricanOrnithology
'You'll choke too' - an aerial embroidery landscape inspired by all the wildfires happening right now... I'm upset every time I smell smoke outside and somehow we have people starting them maliciously too! But we all breathe the same air so they'll choke too (1/2 - see thread for close-ups)
"In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is pertect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful" - Alice Walker 📷 Tania J. Spencer ©️
1/ From next month & throughout October, swans will migrate south across the #Yukon in large V-shaped flocks, reversing their spring migration northwards, just a few months earlier - www.tagishyukon.org/index.php/sw...
About Swans
tagishyukon.org
The Arrival of the Sun, 1962 by Kenojuak Ashevak, artist of Inuit heritage born on Baffin Island #womensart
"I believe that life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary" - Marjory Stoneman Douglas 📷 Tania J. Spencer ©️
1/ By (finally) taking indoor air quality seriously, all the time, we could also put an #OngoingPandemic to bed, without any awkward loss of face for 🇨🇦 #PublicHealth - @crof.bsky.social @thetyee.ca thetyee.ca/Analysis/202...
‘Smoke-Proofing’: The Need for a National Effort | The Tyee
Fouled air by wildfires has become a fact of life. We must act to lessen the health impacts.
thetyee.ca
Fire Weather is in solid company here: Four books that explain why the world is burning en.majalla.com/node/332302/... #wildfire
Four books that explain why the world is burning
Our ancestors managed the land with controlled fires that reduced the accumulation of dry wood and vegetation. Not doing so means we now have giant fuel stores. Sometimes, the old ways are the best
en.majalla.com
1/ A new online tool, #FireEmissionsWatch, uses data from Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) will greatly assist in #Wildfire monitoring in the Eurasian #Arctic - atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-n...
Copernicus: New ‘Fire Emissions Watch’ tool provides instant access to global fire emissions data
Near-real time global biomass burning emissions data is now more accessible than ever before as the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which is implemented by ECMWF, launches ‘Fire Emiss...
atmosphere.copernicus.eu
1/ "For the fourth summer in a row, the #NorthwestTerritories, Canada has seen far above the historically average wildfire activity" - @alaskawx.bsky.social @mparrington.bsky.social @cabinradio.ca open.substack.com/pub/alaskacl...
July 2026 Arctic Wildfire Update
Most of the action in Northwest Territories, Canada
open.substack.com
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has" - Margaret Mead 📷 Tania J. Spencer ©️
1/ My neighbour now has a nice #FireSmart sign outside her home. An official spent 45 minutes explaining how she could reduce wildfire risk around her property & protect her home & neighbourhood. And, better still, by booking this free FireSmart Home Assessment, she could win a leaf blower!
1/ "To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there. As Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist who records natural soundscapes, put it: 'Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything'"
Both #CarlMcCunn and #ChristopherMcCandless, "...in their different ways, were undone less by the wilderness than by their assumptions about it" - fstoppers.com/originals/ph....
Carl McCunn: The Photographer Lost in Alaska | Fstoppers
Carl McCunn's 1981 Alaskan wilderness expedition ended in tragedy when multiple planning failures compounded into a fatal situation. His diary reveals how an experienced photographer's incomplete exit...
fstoppers.com
I cannot be sure, but I think I saw an #AmericanKestrel hunting over Whistle Bend ( #Yukon) yesterday evening. The ventral plumage was strikingly pale - www.researchgate.net/figure/entra...
Figure 2. Ventral view of an American Kestrel with aberrant plumage.
Download scientific diagram | Ventral view of an American Kestrel with aberrant plumage. from publication: Capture of an American Kestrel with Dilute Plumage | The age of the kestrel was initially th...
researchgate.net
"I remember my unabashed delight when a naturalist friend first introduced me to the various terms for groups of birds — from 'a deceit of lapwings' to 'a pitying of turtledoves,' and could there be a notion more charming than 'an ostentation of peacocks'?" www.themarginalian.org/2024/01/04/b...
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being…
themarginalian.org
"Their usual answer was to put people on the ground with binoculars" - that meant 17,500 acres of open country, surveilled with seven full time employees, watching the sky in shifts - #GoldenEagles #WindFarms www.ecoportal.net/en/cameras-4...
A Wyoming wind farm swapped 7 human spotters for 47 camera towers that shut a turbine down in under 2 seconds, and golden eagle deaths at the site dropped by 82 percent
The environmental director at one Wyoming wind site put it more bluntly than any biologist would.
ecoportal.net
Sunset, Whitehorse. #Watercolour on paper, 12x16 inches. #Watercolor #YukonArt Painting of the day 2346.
"Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?" - Jane Goodall 📷 Tania J. Spencer ©️
1/ "Climateflation is inflation with a cause we know, a bill we can already see, and a solution we have delayed for far too long" @ingmar.wsocial.eu @forbes.com www.forbes.com/sites/we-don...
Why Climateflation Will Drive Food Prices More Than War
Economists expect this summer's heatwaves to drive 2027 food prices more than the Iran war. Climateflation, explained: from your grocery bill to your mortgage rate.
forbes.com
"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts" - Rachel Carson 📷 Tania J. Spencer ©️
Artist Kate MacDowell explores the interaction between humans and nature through ceramics, porcelain #WomensArt
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
"Wildness puts us in our place" - Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder 📷 Tania J. Spencer ©️
"Known locally as #Auwo, this bird species that hadn't been seen by humans since its first discovery in 1882, some 140 years earlier" - @digitalcameraworld.bsky.social www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/...
Heartwarming moment camera trap researchers rediscover a "mythical" bird lost to science for over 140 years goes viral
Conservationists used camera traps to capture footage of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, also recording the ecstatic moment they rediscovered the "mythical" avian thought to be extinct for well over ...
digitalcameraworld.com
"But I also don’t think we can give ourselves a pass on harvesting" - Elizabeth MacDonald, manager of fisheries with the Council of #Yukon First Nations www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Chinook salmon in decline, worsened by Bering Sea heatwave a decade ago: study | CBC News
Yukon River Chinook salmon numbers have been in a decline for decades, and a new study from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says a warming of the Bering Sea — where these salmon...
cbc.ca
1/ Shooting has just finished for this film, #FromMeToYou, which was shot on a shoestring budget in #Whitehorse. The film is the #Yukon's first, homegrown, scripted, feature movie in more than a decade - @thr.com @tahmohpenikett.bsky.social #FromMeToYou www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...
‘Heated Rivalry’ Producer Brendan Brady Backs Yukon-Set Rom-Com ‘From Me to You’ (Exclusive)
Director Daniel Little’s feature about two damaged people looking for love in Whitehorse stars Allan Dobrescu, Genvieve Doyon and Tahmoh Penikett.
hollywoodreporter.com
1/ "An intellectual life is not another productivity hack or self-improvement project. It is a way to cultivate your curiosity and enrich your inner life, regardless of whether anyone else notices" - (* Which is pretty much why I post here. It's a record of annotations for/of the self).
Jente Ottenburghs | Avian Hybrids@jenteo.bsky.social · last wk.✍️New blog post! An Antidote to the Attention Economy: Building an Intellectual Life jenteottenburghs.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/a... A short post with a few practical suggestions for building an intellectual life in an age dominated by shallow content and endless distraction.
Behind a paywall, so all that this headline does is sow suspicion & xenophobia, while undermining the integrity of northern Indigenous communities - Do better @nationalobserver.com -
Canada's National Observer@nationalobserver.com · last wk.The RCMP has warned the government that foreign actors could take advantage of self-governing communities in Canada’s North, newly obtained documents reveal.
