Along Kougarok Road near Nome

Nome is a small town (<4,000) and the edge of town is fairly abrupt. While there are scattered houses byond the "edge of town" they quickly become so scattered as to be nonexistent. In that gray area between the edge of town and the complete disappearance of humans, we found, on several occasions, musk ox. This time of year they look pretty rough as they shed the heavy winter coats for a fresh coat of hair for the summer. I just love that this guy above has his tongue out as he chews planty bits. Reminds me of a cat we once had.

Because we are photographers and on this, our second day (first full day), these creatures are new to us, we dutifully run out of the nearly stopped truck to catch a few images of these massive creatures as they have some breakfast alongside the road. I frankly never imagined that we'd actually see musk ox and if we did, I figured it would be from such a distance that we'd not get any images with them looking like anything but ants. But I was pleasantly surprised.

You can see the much abused protuberances of horn/bone on his forehead from the fights he's engaged in for dominance and females. While there is a horn on his left, there is not one on his right side suggesting some pretty tough altercations.

Farther on down the road, we stopped at a spot that was known by our guide to be a good spot for birds. Here we saw an interesting variety of visitors thanks to the clever usage of recorded bird calls.

This one is the Arctic Warbler. Small, fleet, and quick with a rapid-fire call, he was in and out of the bushes around. On the link above, you can also find a link to hear his song.

Next up is the Northern Water Thrush. Again, you can find a link at the descriptive website where you can hear him singing. The bushes around us were willow and were busy putting out a profusion of their brush-like blossoms that many of the birds found tasty.

The Fox Sparrow was another visitor to our little soiree. He has a mostly reddish wings and accents with gray streaks over the head.