u/GXrtic

Just enough of a break in the rain to get the doggos out for an early walk. That's Thar Inlet in the background and Apex buried down in a murk of low-lying fog.

Spotted today while hiking up Apex creek.

Image search suggests that these are willow leaf galls, each containing a sawfly larvae that was deposited into the leaf by its mother earlier in the summer...neato.

Fledging snow buntings, and, I think, a juvenile lapland longspur digging into some bird seed. There are tons of young birds taking their first flights over Iqaluit right now and they are hungry!

Also...jerk shat on my tire!

Apparently the rain came just in time this year. I'm back in Iqaluit after two weeks in the South and the berries are coming on strong. This looks like a not-quite-ripe red or black alpine bear berry.

This female snow bunting, sporting green and silver leg bands, was captured, banded and released around Iqaluit last summer. Over the last 12 months she has migrated somewhere between 5000-8000 kilometers from Iqaluit to wintering grounds in the South and then back again to Iqaluit for breeding season.

Tough little birds!

With apologies for the shaky-cam footage.

This is C-GJKB a DC3 originally constructed in the 1940's.

This is the same aircraft type that carried paratroopers to Normandy on D-Day.

These particular models, operated by Kenn Borek Air, are now more accurately identified as Basler BT-67s, having been modified, strengthened, stretched and updated with new avionics and turbo prop engines.

I'm just old enough to be able to remember flying DC3s in Northern commercial service and the iconic sound of the original piston radial engines.

It makes me happy to see these old birds still flying over Nunavut.

https://borekair.com/fleet/dc3t/

As the most spectacular summer in recent history continues to play out in Iqaluit, I counted at least 6 Arctic bumblebees buzzing around our flower garden together this afternoon.

We live in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut (pronounced new-nah-voot). July 9 is the anniversary of the date of the signing of a 1993 agreement that led to the creation of the territory in 1999 and is celebrated as a holiday for most people.

It's a lovely summer day in our capital, Iqaluit. It's 11 degrees C with loads of sun making my deck feel like 17 degrees and just enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitos down.

Happy Nunavut Day from Bean of the Arctic and the rest of our Arctic family.

This is a common redpoll, probably a male, based on the colour of its chest. We get tons of redpolls visiting our feeders in the winter but relatively few in the summer so I've been pleasantly surprised to see this fellow coming in for morning feeds over the last few days.

It was a morning of Baffin Island tundra and rock climbing for our indomitable little all-terrain tripod Yorkie.

Summer is slowly arriving on our little corner of Baffin Island. It's been warm enough for us to take Bean out every day for the last two months and, now, finally, warm enough for him to go without a coat on.

That water down below is the high tide flooding over the thawing land-fast ice. The ice should start breaking up in the next two weeks and we should have open water and tide flats to explore with Bean by July.