Finnmark birds

A Common Crane strides with ease through dwarf birch and willow scrub on the edge of a mire in  Finnmark, arctic Norway.

I was there to continue helping with surveys and monitoring of birds. For more information, follow this link to the main part of the project, Broad-billed Sandpiper study. The study is still ongoing, as we have deployed geolocator tags on the sandpipers and aim the retrieve them next summer when the birds return from their wintering grounds. So, this post gives only a brief sample of some of the other birds I saw while in the area.

Whimbrel are one of the larger waders that breed in the tundra, especially on lichen-rich heaths or as in this case, cloudberry-crowberry dominated peaty heath next to a mire.

There were a few rainy days when all was quiet. This Ringed Plover was sitting tight on its nest next to a road. The birds colouring fitted well with the lichen-crusted ground.

Out on the mires, there were numerous Red-necked Phalaropes on the open water of tiny pools in the extensive swards of sedges and mosses.

These are great birds, my friends, as they eat hundreds and thousands of mosquitoes, picking them off the water surface or the leaves of waterside vegetation. The mosquitoes make working in the mires extremely difficult due to their incessant biting and swarming around face and hands.

This female Lapland Bunting was feeding on insects, hopefully mosquitoes, in a patch of peat hummocks covered with Labrador tea, cloudberry, crowberry and bilberry.

Her mate was close beside her all the time she was out in the open. The patterns of their markings are similar, but that of the male is much bolder. The flower beside him is Labrador tea.

Down in the valleys, where there are taller trees, woodland passerines are more common, like this female Common Redstart in a Scots pine wood.

Her partner might be more brightly coloured, but he still blended in well with the reds and greys of the pine bark.

It might seem that there is not much to see in the vast landscape of apparently endless mires and woods of Finnmark, but there are plenty, lots, of birds nesting and rearing their young there every summer. Just look a little more closely.

Red-necked phalaropes

An adult male Red-necked Phalarope in breeding plumage - and out of water

For the past few years I have been taking part in a study of arctic-breeding waders in northern Norway. This has been organised by my brother Robert Rae and the local ornithologist Karl-Birger Strann. And there have been numerous other helpers as it is a long-term study.

One of the wader species which breed in the area is the Red-Necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus, and when I photographed a bird walking over dry land I could not remember the last time I had seen this behaviour. For Red-necked Phalaropes spend most of their lives on water, whether on oceans during the non-breeding period, or while spinning around catching mosquitoes in tundra bog pools where they breed.

Sedge-lined pools in the arctic tundra - Red-necked Phalarope breeding habitat

We have caught numerous phalaropes over the years, to ring as part of the long-term study on the population and their movements. They are a reverse sexual dimorphic species, where the female is the larger brighter bird which does most of the sexual displaying, and the males are less boldly marked as they do all the incubation and care of the chicks. Although there are some well-marked males and some dull females, so telling their sex in the field can be trickier than suggested in some literature.

An adult male Red-necked Phalarope - a well marked bird

When holding phalaropes in the hand after catching them, one is given a rare chance to see their lobed toes. Their scientific name Phalaropus means coot foot-like and the lobatus emphasizes the reference to their lobed toes. A feature seldom visible when seen in the field.

The lobed toes of a Red-necked Phalarope

The bird I photographed on land was walking a few metres back to its nest after feeding on a nearby pool. Most Red-necked Phalarope nests are set in wet sites, amongst sedges which fringe the pools where they forage, often in extensive beds of sedge on larger pool systems. The birds build a tiny platform of dry sedge stems, just enough to keep the eggs dry above the waterline.

A typical 'wet' nest site - a platform built above water amongst sedges

Some birds select a dry nest site on the edge of a bank next to a pool, or as in this case on top of a dry hummock amongst scattered pools. The nest was right on top of the hummock, tucked beneath a clump of cotton grass and below a dwarf birch.

A dry phalarope nest site on top of a hummock

A closer view of the same dry nest site

As with most waders, Red-necked Phalaropes usually lay four eggs in a clutch, and again like most wader eggs, they are very well coloured and marked for camouflage, to conceal them while the incubating bird is off feeding.

The eggs are well camouflaged to avoid detection by visually-clued predators such as ravens

When the adult bird is on the nest, the whole is even more hidden as the male's dull plumage colouring blends softly with the surrounding vegetation.

The adult bird is also well concealed when sitting on the nest

Phalaropes might be unusual waders in their habit of being mostly swimmers that rarely walk, but the opposite also occurs. I have seen several species of wader swim, usually just to cross a narrow creek or section of deep water, such as Dunlin or Purple Sandpiper in their winter coastal habitats or Spotted Redshank, another species of wader which breeds in the Norwegian tundra next to the phalaropes.

A non-lobed-toe wader swimming - Spotted redshank crossing a deep section of a feeding pool