one ball, one dog, one raven

I decided to get "outside" balls for Kamik. She has the concept of returning the ball while we play indoors. This didn't translate to outside. She stayed a safe distance away and played by herself.






It didn't take long for Raven to show up, he perched low on the fence, hunkered down making a variety of clucks, clicks and pacoos. Raven carefully watched the dog and the ball. Notorious for eating snowmobile seats, bicycle seats and anything not covered by a tarp; I figured it wanted to eat the ball.


Kamik made every friendly effort to engage Raven, she carefully placed the ball on the snow bank, at his feet, looked up at the bird, nudged the ball, to no avail. She ran across the parking lot with it, dropped it and facing the raven she waited. Nope. More interesting clucks and pacoos. No playing. Finally we (read I) gave up on raven and we returned up the stairs. Naturally the fastest route to the top is to fly, which Raven did and met us at the top of the landing, firmly settled on the rail.

As I turned to get my key I was surprised to see many ravens were circling overhead. Must have thought lunch was being served. Sorry tulugak, perhaps another time.

Merry Christmas

Christmas eve over Frobisher Bay

Not much daylight to take pictures yet!

the raven....again

I don't have the creepy imagination of Poe, but am fascinated by our northern bird. Raven is very cagey.
At lunch today I searched the rooftops and wires for tulugak. He wasn't there, nowhere to be seen. So I tossed out the meat patty and waited. Not long; count thirty and swoosh, on the fly out of nowhere he grabs the patty. In close and noisy pursuit six others followed! Where were they?
How did they know? That patty didn't sit there two whole minutes!

Today my coworker told me about a dog that barks and runs his chain to scold the ravens on the rooftop. Sounds normal enough, squirrels would delight in scolding Caesar if he treed one of them.
But much smarter than a humble black squirrel, Raven turns his tail to the dog and ...and....yes poops on the dogs back!

The bird pictured here made noises I hadn't heard from a raven;he clucked a noise which sounded like two pieces of wood. uhuh wood. Then he said "doink".

Winter Fur

Now with the shortening days and lengthening nights, there is little opportunity to get good pic, especially if you value your fingers. Before walking the dog, and wanting to take advantage of the low winds and the waning sunlight I went in search of a nice image.

Kamiik are slippery boots, having a bearded seal skin or a ujjuk sole and being a klutz to begin with, I didn't venture far down the hill and spent time on hands and knees with camera. Thankfully my fingers, knees and camera did manage to co operate to get a couple of frosty pictures.


Kamik the dog (so named because when she was tiny she looked like she was wearing kamiik) waited patiently for me to return. The new harness does work well in stopping her from taking me sliding across the road, but she's a jumper! No help there from the harness.



The wait finally over; it's time for walkies.