What does a moose think?
24-27 Jan
Winter Study
notes from the field
24 Jan – Half or maybe ¾ of an inch of dreary rain fell during the late morning and early afternoon. It drizzled the rest of the time. The Harbor was covered in about 2 inches of water.
25 Jan – Breakfast can be tough. There seems to be nothing to talk about – no observations to review from the previous day, and no day’s plan to rehearse. To inspire conversation, each evening I’ve been reading from Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World. At breakfast, I report Joshua’s adventures and progress, and we chat about what it must have been like. This morning he was almost taken by the biggest wave of the trip, made the difficult passage through the Straights of Magellan – marauding “savages” and extreme winds.
Snow poured from the sky all day, an angry north wind dragged the temperature down by 30 degrees in 12 hours. There is reason to think that tomorrow, the winds may smile, and bring weather for the Flagship’s passage to Isle Royale.
26 Jan – Breakfast was electric with excitement. The weather was clear, and the Flagship was on the way. At 10am we got the call: the Flagship didn’t pass its test flight.
27 Jan – Alaska – the land of bushplanes and bushplane mechanics. With the advice of an Alaskan mechanic, the mechanics working on the Flagship were able to solve the problem they previously hadn’t been able to. Still some work today. Hopefully, tomorrow the flagship will pass its test flight.
A reader asked why we don’t show many moose pictures. Moose are more difficult to photograph in the winter than you might guess. They spend more time in thick vegetation (rather than on the open ice). This behavior makes photographing them from the plane difficult. Because moose are a bit more shy of people in winter (compared to summer) we only occasionally get nice images of moose from the ground.
Here are a couple images from the winter of 2007. They were taken by the project’s visual artist, George Desort. George spent an entire week, working all day, each day, to get these images.
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In the winter moose food is reduced to twigs and needles – about as nutritious as a cardboard box.
Moose spend most of the winter waiting for it to pass. They are bedded perhaps 16 hours a day – chew their cud, resting, and thinking thoughts that only a moose would understand.