A quick summary of today’s sightings:
We landed at Kirkenes to fantastic weather, blue skies and
hardly a breath of wind. Making our way towards Varanger there were
surprisingly few birds to see and incredibly few gulls, just small numbers of
Herring, Great Black-backed and Kittiwakes. Every now and again the fjord held
some seaduck with Eider the commonest (ca. 500 seen), then Long-tailed Duck
(ca.100), King Eider (ca.50), Mallard (ca.50), Red-breasted Merganser (20),
Velvet Scoter (4) and Goldeneye (1). We also had Steller’s Eider at 2 sites:
Nesseby (50) and Vadsø Harbour (16). Just 3 White-tailed Eagles and no other raptors
or owls. Passerines were of course very few and far between but we did have
House Sparrow, Greenfinch, Great Tit, a single Willow Tit calling in a way I
have never heard before and 2 Arctic Redpolls.
Mammal wise we had a few Reindeer, a single Bearded Seal (mammal tick), 2
Grey Seals, some other seals which were probably Common Seals and some small
cetaceans that may have been White-beaked Dolphins.
The days are quite long already but the sun doesn’t rise
very high so the evenings are long. Light-wise it started to be evening before
4pm but it didn’t get dark until after 6pm.
Today’s pictures were rather poor but here are the best of
them:
 |
| Steller's Eider, Vadsø Harbour |
 |
| Add caption |
 |
| Purple Sandpipers |
 |
| Steller's Eider |
 |
| Bearded Seal, the beard being very visible |
 |
| Arctic Redpoll. Crappy picture but you can at least see how white they should be |