Goodbye to the Arctic

The holiday is coming to an end. We are now driving the 1200km (or more if we take the scenic route) back to Oslo.

The last week has seen me have additional visits to both Graddis and Sulis.

Sulis has resulted in the same species as before and even more Northern Clouded Yellows with them being the commonest butterfly but my hopes of getting better photos of both them and the Pale Arctic Clouded Yellows were dashed by the fact that they hardly ever landed and if they did land close to me it was all too short and my camera handling skills were lacking (the autofocus is broken so I am doing everything manually..).

I visited Graddis 9 days after my very successful visit and it was almost like I was visiting another locality. Two weeks of blazing sun and long, hot days had clearly been too much for the northern species and I saw none of the 4 goodies I had seen previously. I may have seen an Arctic Ringlet (disaringvinge) but it never stopped flying and my one photo is very unconclusive. Idas Blues were now very common though and this had been absent just 9 days before. One big surprise was finding a Large Heath (myrgulvinge) which is the first ever record for Nordland county. Most of northern Norway has ever been visited by anyone with any interest in butterflies so there are surely lots of surprises out there waiting to be found but Graddis has been visited often enough and Large Heath is an obvious species so I feel sure this was a vagrant wanderer.

I also added a new species of dragonfly to my list with Alpine Emerald (fjellmetallibelle) proving to be fairly easy to find at both Sulis and especially Graddis where surprisingly it has not been recorded before which does perhaps show that even here there is definitely more to be found.

Bird wise there has been little of interest with just a few waders including my first juvenile Ruff and Spotted Redshank of the «autumn» and my first ever Treeceeper at the cabin.

A female Alpine Emerald (fjellmetallibelle) that was laying eggs

Male Purple-edged Copper (purpurgullvinge)

Moorland Clouded Yellow (myrgulvinge) on a Fragrant Orchid (brudespor)

Dewy Ringlet (Fjellringvinge)

The first Large Heath (myrringvinge) recorded in Nordland county

Also my best ever photo of the species I think

Was this an Arctic Ringlet (disaringvinge) or just an Arran Brown (fløyelsringvinge)?

Another Alpine Emerald

Blåmannsisen Glacier from close to the cabin

A male Bluethroat (blåstrupe) with food for young that were already out of the nest

Site for Alpine Emerald and also Azure Hawker (fjellibelle)

Male Northern Clouded Yellows (mjeltgulvinge)

And here a female

Another missed photo

And here a missed photo of a Pale Arctic Clouded Yellow (polargulvinge)

And again…. But there will always be another year and hopefully another camera lens

Summer holidays 2025 - the start of the end

The final part of the summer holiday is beginning and for the first time since 2022 I will be back spending time at the cabin outside of Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle. Jr and I drove up starting from Oslo at 08:55 yesterday and we covered 1281km in 23 hours and 50 minutes with less than an hour of that used for sleep but including 5 stops for birding/butterflying and dog airing. When you drive north through the night in the middle of the summer it never gets dark and that helps keep tiredness as bay although once we got to the cabin we felt it.

Apart from the stops the drive up was extremely bird and animal free with the total of big/interesting species observed (excluding Cranes which are getting almost too common) being 2 Common Buzzard, 3 Kestrel, 1 Marsh Harrier, 1 Raven, 1 Fox, 1 Hare and 4 Moose. This is an appalling total!!

The stops were for Apollo butterfly which was a quick success, Pallid Harrier which was a dip although a male Hen Harrier did show, Ørin in Trøndelag for waders which was also a dip, Saltfjellet on the Arctic Circle where Red-necked Phalaropes and Ruff were good but no raptors or Long-tailed Skuas and finally 35 minutes from the cabin Klungsettvika where they were alarmingly few sea ducks but hopefully my stop was too fleeting and further visits will deliver more.

At the cabin a pair of Common Gulls has nested on the roof and two large young are still there with the parents guarding them - it will be a noisy stay!

Apollo butterfly - a beautiful beast of an insect

A bit more distant

There were also a couple of Hummingbird Hawk Moths (dvergsvermer)

Saltfjellet looking south

My first ever Lesser Teatblade orchid (småtveblad) which were tiny

Red-necked Phalaropes (svømmesnipe)

The view from the cabin and I have already seen Common Porpoise (nise) and Arctic Skua (tyvjo)

I heard the Porpoises (nise) before I saw them

August update

Our summer holidays usually include a week or two spent at our cabin near Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle but with growing kids it appears that is no longer something the whole family wants to do. I always love out time there so miss this greatly but we did have chance to visit the cabin this year if only for a couple of hours when we went to Bodø for a wedding last weekend. I had a quick check of my favourite bird and butterfly locations and found next to nothing especially on the butterfly front which made it a bit easier to accept not having spent longer there this year.

Around Oslo it has been very variable weather with a few hours of sunshine and then thunderstorms and very heavy rain. This has made searching for bugs difficult and if continues like this then I imagine a lot of species will have a bad season. I have however seen one of my favourite butterflies and probably the last species I will see this year – Brown Hairstreak.

On the bird front raptors are becoming more obvious in Maridalen and I have had quite a few sightings of Honey Buzzards and Ospreys. There have also been concentrations of divers on the lake with up to 7 Red-throated and 11 Black-throated. All are adults and while the Red-throated are fishing and taking the fish back to their breeding pools in the forest where young are waiting the Black-throated have no young and are clearly a concentration of failed/non breeders. There has not been successful breeding on Maridalsvannet this year with water levels have varied too much and I imagine the same has happened on many of the larger lakes in the area. Red-throated Divers probably experience less variation in water levels on the small forest pools they choose.

Brown Hairstreak (slåpetornstjertvinge)

and another individual. Both these are males

these 3 Ospreys (fiskeørn) were flying together and making a lot of noise in Maridalen. I thought at first they must be a family despite it being an early date for fledged young but as the next photo shows they are all adults

the 3 different birds. All are adults and I think all are males (but am unsure). Perhaps they are young birds that have not yet established a territory or mate or perhaps failed breeders.

all my views of Honey Buzzards were at long range but Maridalen's breeding pair of Buzzards (musvåk) showed well one day although it is a while since I have seen them. I do not know if they have raised any young this year but they were making a lot of noise flying over their nesting area and one was even carrying nesting material. I have no idea what this means.

11 Black-throated Divers (storlom)

the last Lapwings (vipe) an adult Female and a juvenile were in Maridalen until 2 August but seem to have migrated now

an attempt at photography - a daisybird

there are still a few juvenile Red-backed Shrikes (tornskate) but the family groups have broken up and the adult males moved off

dragonflies are tricky. I revisited the sight where I found the Bog Hawker (torvmoselibelle) and saw what I thought were three male but going through my pictures found that a Moorland Hawker (starrlibelle) had also sneaked in amongst them. Bog above and Moorland below

and here a much better picture of a Bog Hawker

the largest pool in the dragonfly bog

a picture from where our cabin is showing the distant Blåmannsisen glacier close to the Swedish border. The ice free areas seem to grow every year (without me having done any proper analysis)

Summer holidays - heading south

Our summer holidays are far from over but part 2 at the cabin in Bodø is over and I am writing this whilst we are driving back south.

The time at the cabin ended with a new, and my 66th Norwegian species of, butterfly when I again visited the alpine habitats around Sulitjelma and found a species I have long wanted to see - Northern Couded Yellow, which is orange on the upperside and impossible to miss as it flutters over the tundra. It was also much more approachable than the Pale Arctic Clouded Yellow which I again found and despite it  quickly disappearing over the mountainside I manged OK pictures of it on the ground hiding in grass.

A quick stop on Saltfjellet as we crossed the Arctic Circle revealed the strange sight of 14 noisy Long-tailed Skuas and 2 Arctic Terns flying around high up seemingly catching flying insects.

Northern Clouded Yellow (mjeltgulvinge)

The undersidenwoth the sun shing through and showing the orsnge colours

The underside

A much better picture of a Pale Arctic Clouded Yellow (polargulvinge)

Golden Plover (heilo)

With the Blåmannsisen glacier in the background

Wigeon (brunnakke) duckling

Wigeon mum

Whooper Swan (samgsvane) family

6 Long-tailed Skuas (fjelljo)

Long-tailed Skua and Arctic Tern (rødnebbterne)

Female Bluethroat (blåstrupe) who clearly had young nearby

False musk orchid (fjellkurle)

habitat of Northern Clouded Yellow

Vanilla scented bog orchid (Fjellhvitkurle)

This balloon was floating over the cabin at 130,000 ft (39.6km) and is the size of a football stadium with an instrument to measure cosmic rays hanging under it. It was launched from Sweden by NASA. more info here  https://sites.wustl.edu/xlcal/home/