Garrett Ast of Eagle-Vail, Colorado, found this caterpillar with false eyes at Alaska’s Quartz Lake this August.

Ned Rozell photo.

On a recent expedition to Alaska’s Quartz Lake, four-year-old visitor to Alaska Garrett Ast plucked a caterpillar from a twig. As Garrett held it in his palm, the caterpillar reared up and &

A juvenile Kittletz's murrelet, caught on the water of Kachemak Bay, Alaska.

Photo by Alyson McNight, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While hiking the rocky high country on one of the westernmost islands in Alaska a few years ago, Robb Kaler stumbled onto a birder’s dream. Walking around a knee-high volcanic boulder, Kaler flushed a plump little seabird. The bird bounced off a rock and disappeared into the fog. Kaler looked down and saw a turquoise egg in a shallow cup of tundra.

“I knew it was something great,” Kaler said.

The screen images of a new iPhone application that will allow people to alert experts to marine mammals washed up on Alaska’s shores.

Ned Rozell photo.

“Found Sea Otters Dead at 3851 Homer Spit Road . . . Right in front of oyster facility.”

Verena Gill was thrilled when this message appeared on her iPhone on a recent

Climber and geologist Jeff Benowitz pictured in the Alaska Range.

Photo courtesy Jeff Benowitz.

About 15 years ago, a distinguished geology professor named David Hopkins noticed that one of his brightest students wasn’t captivated by the course Hopkins was teaching. After class, he call

Yellow lines on this mosaic of satellite images show possible sailing routes through the Northwest Passage in early September 2010.

Image courtesy of the Canadian Ice Service, copyright MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. 2010.

On or within a few days of September 15, sea ice experts will make the call declaring that sea ice floating on northern oceans is covering its least amount of ocean surface in 2010. The great north

Augustine Volcano, in a photo taken from Diamond Ridge near Homer.

Photo courtesy of Dennis Anderson, Night Trax Photography.

On Oct. 6, 1883, this entry was in the Alaska Commercial Company logbook at an English Bay trading post, located about 50 miles northeast of Augustine volcano:

“This mornin

Three bowhead whales feeding north of Barrow on large concentrations of krill.

NOAA photo by Craig George.

Attracted by some of the smallest creatures in Alaska, dozens of the state’s largest gathered last week off Point Barrow.

Bowhead whales in groups of almost 100 were group

 

A drawing of polar bears on St. Matthew Island that appeared in Harper’s Weekly Journal of Civilization in 1875.

“We landed on St. Matthew Island early on a cold gray August morning, and judge our astonishment at finding hundreds of large polar bears . . . lazily sleeping in grassy hollows, or digging u

Trumpeter swans, a species that may find the Alaska of the future offers more of the ice-free days they need to hatch and raise their young.

Photo by Donna Dewhurst, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

At the end of this century, more graceful white bodies of migrating trumpeter swans will glide over Alaska. Alpine slopes will be quieter, with less piercing whistles from the Alaska marmot. Caribo

Craig George, left, and Leslie Pierce look for bowhead whales north of Barrow.

OFF POINT BARROW — “We’re a long ways offshore,” Craig George says. “The water beneath us is about 180 feet deep.”