Arctic Dreams

So our last full day then and really busy. I'll cover as much as I can today but will probably do a couple of extra blogs over the next couple of days just to round up and re-cap so stay tuned.

Up at dawn which was frosty, clear and calm and down to the main site.
We had a steady morning's ringing with 313 birds caught of which 303 were new birds. The wind got up, the wind chill kicked in big style and we closed the nets at midday. Then a busy time taking down all the nets and sorting and storing all the equipment for next years expeditions. Back at home we ran the garden nets for a little while just so that we could break the 300 birds caught for the day barrier - not that we're competitive.

Taking down the nets, as you can see autumn is well and truly here now. It snowed a few miles away yesterday.

Final shot of ringers for 2014 just before we left the site for the last time - Simon, John, Tim, Fergus, Cloe and Andy

View from the ringing site over the fjord at low tide - Nesseby church with fish drying rack to left.

View of the ringing site for the last time.

Kate Utsi our wonderful "landlady" popped in to say goodbye during a break from catching up her reindeer. Tormod (who runs Biotope who organise the funding) along with Elin and Lila (my new best friend) also came to say farewell.

Then a final walk in the amazing Varangahalvoya National Park which is a mere 20,000 sq.km., to try to find Siberian Tit, another mystic taiga speciality which we had yet to see. Had a fantastic walk in late afternoon sunshine and then finally just before sunset there it was - a little fluffball gleaning insects from the birches just a couple of meters away.

Here's a pic of one that the previous team caught - it's a cracker.

View in the National Park this afternoon - a mere 20,000 sq. km. of pristine taiga and tundra.

To top it off as we were driving out of the park we saw yet another two Hawk Owls - brilliant!

Hawk Owl, star bird. This one seen by previous expedition.

Then a bit of a tidy up of Kate's house (much more to do in the morning) and down to Varangerbotn for a meal of reindeer fricassee and chips at the great little Capri Cafe. We bumped into a hunter in the car park who had a boot full of Willow Grouse and had a long interesting chat with him. This was a proper sportsman who has to walk (yes walk) 8 hours to get to his cabin on the tundra, before he can even start hunting and you can bet you'd never catch him shooting a bird of prey, unlike the pampered Red Grouse "sportsmen" in the UK who have never walked 8 hours in their life and have virtually wiped out Hen Harriers in England.

Back to the house by 2130 to pack. To cap a perfect trip we then had the most spectacular auroral display against a brilliantly cloudless sky with the accompaniment of Redwings calling as they moved south for winter - some of them will be in your gardens soon.

Tonight's view from the garden.

Well that's all for now. The rest of them are fast asleep already. Tune in Sunday/Monday for a final resume of what has been a fantastic experience.


We ringed 303 birds today comprising -

Common Redpoll - 143
Reed Bunting - 76
Meadow Pipit - 37
Greenfinch - 14
Dunnock - 10
Arctic Redpoll - 8
Redwing - 8
Brambling - 3
Fieldfare - 2
Chiffchaff - 1
Bluethroat - 1

The cold wind doth blow and we shall have snow

A bitterly cold windy day today after yesterday's sub-tropical weather.
This morning the team split with Simon and I heading off to Vardo to do another bird ringing demonstration for Vardo Primary School this time, while Andy, Cloe, Ferg and John worked the main ringing site.

It's part of the deal for all involved with the Varanger Bird Ringing Project that we work with local school children to help foster a love and understanding of nature. It's just great working with the kids as they are all so enthusiastic. Vardo is the most north-eastern town in Europe (believe it or not it's further east than Istanbul) and it certainly felt like it at 9.30 this morning with a bitterly cold wind ripping in off the fjord. You wouldn't have thought so though looking at the expressions on the children's faces - rapt and full of concentration. So if any of you children see this - thanks for being such fun and so interested and so well behaved. You were great! Here are a few pictures, hope you can spot yourself.

Great Hats

Great Kids

Back at base the rest of the team were battling the wind to try to catch birds. Only the sheltered nets could be opened and this massively reduced the catch at the main site, with the team beating a retreat at noon.  To try to boost numbers we also opened the nets back at Kate's in the afternoon.

We caught 170 birds today which was pretty good considering the weather.
163 of these were newly ringed, comprising
Common Redpoll - 78
Reed Bunting - 22
Meadow Pipit - 16
Dunnock - 9
Redwing - 9
Great Tit - 7
Willow Warbler - 6
Fieldfare - 4
Greenfinch - 4
Arctic Redpoll - 4
Bluethroat - 2
Brambling - 1
Dunlin - 1

This is a slightly truncated blog today. Tomorrow is our last full day. The good news is that the wind is due to drop, the bad news is it will be colder. Snow is on its way but will probably (we hope) arrive after we leave. We will try to post a valedictory blog tomorrow if we have time - if not check out Saturday/Sunday.

No after you Ferg

A glorious day in Finnmark today. Ice was on the windscreen as we left but it was clear and calm. As we arrived at the ringing site the rising sun, shining through a dip in the hills to the east, lit up Nesseby church on its promontory in the fjord and nothing else. It was an impressive sight and made me wonder if the church is on a former sacred site. We are virtually at the autumnal equinox when the days and nights are of equal length and we move from the long days of summer to the winter darkness. Varangerfjord has a huge concentration of ancient Sami ceremonial sites and what better place for one, than a promontory in the fjord that is lit at dawn at the autumn equinox. The rest of the day was glorious with the sun beating down (in an Arctic sort of way - we were still well layered) all day from a luminous blue sky.

Bird ringing was very much the order of the day and we caught 446 birds of which only 8 were retraps. This is a great catch by normal standards here, but after yesterday's massive catch it somehow seemed a bit disappointing - a stroll in the park with no adrenaline rush.

Nevertheless we caught some interesting birds. A Song Thrush was the first of the trip and unusual this far north. Redpoll passage was again heavy and we have started to catch birds from further afield. Today we caught 6 Arctic Redpolls and a female bird which was probably an islandica type which breeds in Iceland. This latter is by far the biggest redpoll that we have caught so far with a wing of 79 mm. Compare this bird with the photo of Arctic Redpoll in yesterday's blog to see just how different Redpolls can be.

islandica Redpoll - deep  and long beak

Heavy streaking on flanks

Heavy streaking on rump

We added two new animals to the expedition list with a lovely pod of five or so Harbour Porpoises drifting about in the glassy water of the fjord being the highlight. The second addition was a Weasel. In normal circumstances that would be fine, they are captivating little things and great to watch. Unfortunately this one had managed to catch itself in a mist net after presumably trying to take one of the birds from the net. By the time Chloe, John and Ferg found it, it was moderately disgruntled and snarly. Sadly we have no photos of the extraction process for your amusement but suffice to say that John the Wise took a back seat and allowed Ferg the Brave the honour.
         

The offending very scary animal, all of 17 cm long but weasily capable of scaring full-grown men.

We added three more species to the list of birds. Pride of place went to two pairs of Black-throated Divers whose haunting cries echoed back and forth across the water. It seems a strange time of year but they were displaying. Perhaps the weather had something to do with it! The call is so far carrying that we could even hear them from Kate's garden a kilometer away.  Listen to the call here.
The others were a  Fulmar over the fjord and a Grey Plover calling over the house after dark.

The 438 birds ringed today comprised -
Meadow Pipit - 158
Common Redpoll - 140
Reed Bunting - 77
Dunnock - 24
Great Tit - 12
Arctic Redpoll - 7
Greenfinch - 6
Redwing - 5
Bluethroat - 3
Brambling - 2
Chiffchaff - 2
Dunlin - 1
Song Thrush - 1

Today we are all feeling slightly fatigued.

After two days of howling wind, today dawned flat calm (hurrah!) and by 9 am the sun came out (hurrah again!) and shone for the rest of the day. Birds had clearly been hunkered down like us for the previous two days and we expected migration to resume with a vengeance. When we got down to the main ringing site it was clear that this was exactly what was happening. What followed will remain with us for many a day as birds flew unendingly into the nets and tested our abilities to stay cool and to work under pressure to the limit. By the end of the day we had caught and processed 703 birds comprising 694 newly ringed and 7 retraps - more than has ever been achieved in a day by the project. Somehow we also made time to get a single wader net up, previously it has either been too windy or the tide has been wrong or we have been too busy. We caught four new species for the trip - Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Willow Tit and miraculously a Three-toed Woodpecker. This last is another of the taiga specialities and high on most birders' bucket list.

Three-toed Woodpecker

Quite perky!

Very spotted wings and big white fingers on the tertials

And yeah, verily it hath but three toes!

We also managed to add a few more species to the list of birds seen - an Arctic Skua out on the fjord, 11 Pochards (a scarce bird this far north we think) and a Red-throated Pipit. We rounded off the day with wonderful views of five Short-eared Owls doing a fantastic aerial dance together in a spectacular pre-roost display.

Arctic Redpoll

Dunlins - note variation in bill length and shape

And finally...........

Number of birds ringed today were - 

Meadow Pipit - 362

Reed Bunting - 144

Common Redpoll - 111

Dunnock - 21

Redwing - 18

Dunlin - 10

Greenfinch - 6

Willow Warbler - 6

Bluethroat - 4

Brambling - 3

Ringed Plover - 3

Willow Tit - 3

Three-toed Woodpecker - 1

Great Tit - 1

Arctic Redpoll - 1

and finally, finally................

The view from the decking

Time is a Ship that Never Casts Anchor - Sami Proverb

As predicted, yesterday dawned with brooding clouds and was perhaps even windier than the day before. Ringing by the fjord was clearly a non-starter but we again managed to catch a few birds in Kate's garden first thing - 24 Common Redpolls, three House Sparrows and a Brambling.

The rest of the day was spent in retail therapy, being tourists and birding.

In the afternoon we paid a visit to the great little Samiske Museum at Varangerbotn. Great exhibitions on there at the moment of photos of Sami today and of traditional Sami crafts by a range of fantastic craft-workers from across the Sami homelands.

Inside the Museum

The head of Varangerfjord at Varangerbotn Sami Museum

Outside there is a range of traditional Sami structures with a turf house, turf stable and hay and fish drying racks.

Sami Stable

Hay Drying Rack

Fish Drying Rack

We also managed a bit of birding between us with yet another fruitless search for Siberian Tit.
We did manage though to see a couple of Sea Eagles, six Rough-legged Buzzards, two Short-eared Owls, a Spotted Redshank and a Greenshank. Highlight of the day was great views of two Hawk Owls in the National Park just behind Nesseby.

Nesseby Church tonight

John taking the previous picture - manning the post!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

We don't know how many Sami words there are for cold but if we did we would have used most of them yesterday. It was obvious straight away that the wind was bound to preclude any ringing down at our main site on the side of the fjord but we did manage a couple of hours catching Redpolls in Kate's garden.

We spent the rest of the day drifting slowly eastwards along the north shore of Varangerfjord, birding as we went. Conditions were challenging as the wind rose to Force 7, occasionally gusting 8.

Stormy Weather

Cloe, John and Tim watching Steller's Eider

Highlights of the day in no particular order were -  nice views of Reindeer just west of Vardo; Pomarine Skuas at Nesseby and Bukkemoltangen and good views of at least 2 Steller's Eiders at Vadso (a new bird for most of us). Most spectacular though, was the immense flock of 5000+ Goosanders (with 100 Long-tailed Ducks for company) which filled the whole bay close inshore at Bukkemoltangen. More prosaically the Tree Sparrow in the garden was an extremely good record for the area - they have only recently arrived this far north, presumably as a result of climate change.

Mummy

Baby

 The most sheltered of the bays that we found - 5000 Goosanders here!

It was a hard days birding as we sought out bays in the coast which were sheltered enough to hold birds and then had places were we could find shelter for ourselves. We managed to recharge with kaffe og kaka at Tormod's house in Vardo (thanks guys)  and warmed up at dark with a pretty damn fine fisk suppe in the Vardo Hotel.

Vardo - note hands stuffed firmly in pockets!

Welcome shelter from the storm

Pretty cool graffiti

 Vardo harbour, note large golfball, might be 

 due to proximity of Russia's Arctic Fleet. 

Weather forecast looks the same again for today, Monday but perhaps with stronger wind - oh joy!

Might be a bit of a truncated blog therefore.

Yesterday's  meagre ringing total was 34 birds comprising 32 Common Redpolls and single Willow Warbler and House Sparrow.

No flies on us - they're all on the rocks

Last night was our coldest yet with frost by the time we went to bed. As a consequence we delayed our start time this morning and gave ourselves an extra hour in bed. We arrived on site at 0545 with frost still on the outside of our lavvu ringing base. There was virtually no wind and so predictably there was no visible migration to be seen and so we expected to catch relatively few birds. How wrong we were. The first net round soon showed that Redpolls and Reed Buntings were still moving through in big numbers. As the sun came up the temperature rose steadily so that by mid morning layers were being discarded steadily. The fjord was glass-like and from our ringing base, Nesseby church, perched on its little promontory, looked even more enchanting than ever.

    Nesseby Church

By mid morning the wind shifted to the south-east and freshened. Layers soon went back on again as air straight out of Siberia pushed the wind chill up several notches. We finished the session around 12.30 with a total of 363 birds ringed far exceeding what we were expecting but again the range of species was disappointing.

We were pleased to have a visit from Tormod Amundsen (of Biotope) and his wife and daughter Elin and Lila. It's thanks to Tormod and Biotope that this project happens - they do a fantastic job of promoting the wildlife heritage value of the area, especially with local children.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying ourselves, firstly recharging our batteries back at base (the fantastic Kate Utsi's house, who is currently away rounding up her reindeer) and then on a trip up the Tana valley on the Finnish border.

We spent a while lounging on the veranda in the sun where some of the team seemed to have trouble understanding your blogger's impeccable fashion sense - although personally I see nothing wrong with pairing black base-layers with ladies' knitted woollen hats. More "interesting" photos of other team members may well follow.



   Ninja Tim

Our jaunt up the Tana valley was notable firstly for the huge numbers of large black flies, with fetching red thighs, carpeting all the rocks on the river's edge - if anyone knows what they are then please let us know, and secondly the three Hawk Owls that we encountered along the road. Hawk Owls are an almost mystical, nomadic arctic owl, high on the list of every birders wish list. Vole numbers are particularly high here this year and so the owls are being seen regularly here at the moment.



   Strange Flies by Tana river

We finished the evening at the local cafe/restaurant in Varangarbotn where some of us ate a wonderful meal of Reindeer steak with bilberry sauce. This did our little bit to support the local Sami herders including Kate whose house we are borrowing. The Sami way of life and their culture and traditions are intimately bound up with Reindeer and eating this organic, free range, sustainably produced  meat is a tasty way of showing our support.

The forecast for tomorrow is for gales - never a good thing this far north, so there may not be much to report in the next blog.

The number of birds ringed today was 363 comprising -
Common Redpoll - 133
Reed Bunting - 102
Meadow Pipit - 97
Dunnock - 17
Willow Warbler - 5
Bluethroat - 4
Redwing - 1
Garden Warbler - 1
Brambling - 1
Greenfinch - 1
Arctic Redpoll - 1

Post post postscript - the bugger the log blog

Just when we thought that yesterday couldn't have been much better, it was. Extensive perusal of mammal droppings on Google Images (it's a s****y job but someone's got to do it) confirmed our suspicions that what we thought were Moose droppings really were and more excitingly the very large number of Brown Bear poos really were lots and lots of Brown Bear poos.

The icing on yesterday's cake came at about 10 pm with a great display of the Northern Lights which lasted for about 30 minutes, Everyone finally stumbled into beds very happy bunnies wondering what tomorrow would bring.



Last nights view from the veranda


Well tomorrow, i.e. today, brought bitterly cold Force 6 winds at dawn with the threat of rain. The school children who were camping in their lavvus (look it up) and were expecting to come for another visit immediately realised the error of their ways and packed up and went home. We were about to do the same as there was no obvious passage going on and most of the nets were very exposed. Then out of nowhere Redpolls started to drop in. We only had four of our 18 nets that were sheltered enough to open but managed to quickly cut another net ride and set a net and then retreat into our own lavvu. In the end we we had a fantastic day given the conditions and the limited number of nets. Redpolls were everywhere and we ended up with 167 Common Redpolls - around 70% of all the birds ringed. In contrast to our first two days there was barely a Meadow Pipit to be seen. Highlights of the day were an adult male and a juvenile Arctic Redpoll - our first of the  week.



Adult Arctic Redpoll




Adult Arctic Redpoll (L) with Mealy (R)




Adult Arctic Redpoll (L) with Mealy (R)




Adult Arctic Redpoll

Need to sign off now as we have still to do the log and as one of our party says we can't log until we've blogged (see above)

The 259 birds ringed today were -
Common Redpoll - 167
Reed Bunting - 44
Meadow Pipit - 21
Dunnock - 7
Great Tit - 5
Willow Warbler - 5
Bluethroat - 3
House Sparrow - 2
Arctic Redpoll - 2
White Wagtail - 1
Fieldfare - 1
Brambling - 1

Sunset on Varangerfjord