Showing posts with label Ringed Plover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ringed Plover. Show all posts

Monday 1 July 2019

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.

Tuesday 28 May 2019

A rain day

Yesterday was little bit wet. It rained all day and the hills in north west Sutherland were blanked out, as seen in this view from the Kyle of Durness.

At high tide the waders on the Kyle were sheltering behind clumps of seaweed, like these four Dunlin. Water is good for saturation, colour saturation, and the richness of the greens and yellows of the seaweed were stunning. These dunlin were probably birds that breed in Iceland and they had been prevented from travelling across the Atlantic by the constant north winds. A Knot, a Sanderling and several Whimbrel were also on the shore, all northn breeding birds. There were about 400 Dunlin waiting in the Kyle.

The rain was heavy, splashing all around and the wind was strong. Yet the birds kept low, tucked in their bills and fluffed up their feathers to keep warm until the tide went back out and they could begin foraging again.

A Ringed Plover rested with a couple of Dunlin, taking time to preen its feathers while they all rested.


A single Greenshank was resting farther along the shore, standing knee deep in weed and rustling its feathers to shake off the rain drops. This bird would have been one of a local breeding pair. Its mate would be incubating their eggs up in their nest hidden on the moorland above the Kyle. This bird would have flown down to the shore to feed on the rich invertebrate life and small fish that live on the edge of the weed.


But the Dunlin are the species that attracted and held my attention. Their breeding plumage of dark bellies and rich red backs are so delicately toned. And their trilling flight calls as they fly over the wet sands are so evocative of the northern heaths and tundra.