Jim, Jacqui and I had most of the day around Longyearbyen once again. It was a cold, grey and foggy start and at one stage it looked like the three remaining Brits (Bill, Lex and Nigel) may not even get to land.
| phew - last of the crew coming in to land |
For the most part it was a rerun of the previous day with
wonderful close encounters with the crooning Eiders, Barnacle Geese and Purple
Sandpipers but there were some new birds to be found with a total of 21
Pink-footed Geese and ten Pale-bellied Brents noted and six Eurasian Teal.
| Common Eider |
| Common Eider |
| Common Eider |
| Barnacle Goose |
| Barnacle Goose - FFH - ring submitted |
| Common Eider |
| Common Eider |
| Purple Sandpiper |
| Purple Sandpiper |
| Barnacle Geese including a leucistic bird. |
| I wonder if it was one of the ones I saw at Mereshead in November 2024? |
| Pink-footed Geese |
| Purple Sandpiper |
The Arctic Terns were a lot more active and there were more Glaucous Gulls hanging around the Husky pens where most of the wildfowl were breeding. I still could not find any Phalaropes but the Dunlin were displaying in their fizzy sort of way. The pair of Red-throated Divers were even better in a moment of sunlight today.
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| Glaucous Gull |
| Glaucous Gull |
| Glaucous Gull |
| Arctic Tern |
| Red-throated Diver |
| Red-throated Diver |
| Red-throated Diver |
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| Red-throated Diver - Jim Willett |
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| Arctic Terns - Anne Bielamowicz |
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| Arctic Terns - Anne Bielamowicz |
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| Arctic Tern - Jim Willett |
The towering cliff above town were slowly clearing of fog
and then low cloud and immediately we could see hundreds of tiny dots whizzing
to and fro. They had to be Little Auks
but we needed to be closer and so took a stroll through the town past the Snow
Buntings and up to the church from where we could clearly see and even hear
these micro auks whirring around. You
could see them perched outside cracks in the cliffs and on the top of the
highest points were inevitably a pair of Barnacle Geese. It seems amazing to think that they too breed
on these cliffs and then bounce their goslings all the way to the bottom and
walk them to the sea.
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| The old coal bucket line with Little Auks above - Jim Willett |
| Little Auks |
| Little Auks nesting cliffs |
| Little Auks |
| Little Auks on both sides but a low cloud optical illusion that the white snow line was the top... |
| and then it lifted a bit more |
| Little Auks |
The white wings of a Rock Ptarmigan flew along the slope and
I could hear him cackling away before he looped back around us and landed on
the old mining gantry where the buckets used to change direction. He was in an odd plumage being mostly white
still.
| Rock Ptarmigan |
| Rock Ptarmigan |
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| Rock Ptarmigan - Jim Willett |
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| the change of direction wheel - Jim Willett |
| Snow Bunting |
| Snow Bunting |
| Snow Bunting |
| Snow Bunting |
| Snow Bunting |
| Snow Bunting |
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| Snow Bunting - a female - equally different in sum plum - Jim Willett |
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| Longyearbyen church - Jim Willett |
There was lots of ground flora if you looked with tiny
yellow and white flowered Alpine Whitlow Grass, Arctic
mouse-ear chickweed and Polar Willow. The local Spitzbergen Reindeer seemed to
living well off it!
| Arctic Whitlow-Grass - Draba fladnizensis |
| Arctic mouse-ear chickweed - Cerastium arcticum |
| Tufted Saxifrage |
| Spitzbergen Reindeer |
| Spitzbergen Reindeer |
| The most disturbing pictorial representation of an elephant we had ever seen |
We chilled after lunch and after marvelling once more at the inland landscape being revealed as the cloud lifted we caught a cab down to the pier to get the coach to the ship but our cabby new best ad drove us straight to the Coal Quay where the MV Ortelius, our home for the next eight days was moored up. It was not a problem and our cases were tagged and whisked away and we did not have to wait too long for the rest of the crew to arrive and assemble.
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| MV Ortelius |
The short wait gave us the chance to watch Brunnich’s and Black Guillemots in the harbour and kirickkking Arctic Terns dipping down for tiny fish only they could see.
| Brunnich’s Guillemot |
| Arctic Tern |
Once onboard we headed to our cabins and I had Bill sharing
with me. It was a spacious enough room
with a big bathroom and two portholes. I
glanced outside and saw a disturbance on the surface and pulled Bill to have a
look and immediately up popped the long curved back and arching dorsal of a
Minke Whale!
We had not even pulled away!
What a start!
My crew of eight soon met me up on deck as we gracefully
slid out into the fjord although the first Pinniped that we found splashing
around turned out not to be a Walrus as hoped but a rather pink naked lady who
had gone for a swim before hauling out on the beach! Avert your eyes children!
Those Little Auks from way up on the cliffs reappeared over
the sea at this point and whizzed at high speed back and forth and all sported
full black breeding hoods. I had only
seen one in such plumage before and think that any one flock was probably more
than my entire UK birding total for the species. Our new American friends call them Dovekies
and likewise Brunnich’s Guillemots are known as Thick-billed Murres (let’s
leave Skuas and Divers for the time being!) and to start with I had to use all
the names but it did not take too long for the latter to become known as
Fatheads. I only found two Common
Guillemots amongst them and the odd Puffin too along with various shades of
Fulmar and thankfully unchanging Kittiwakes.
| Little Auks |
| Little Auks |
| Little Auks |
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| Puffin - Jim Willett |
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| Brunnich’s Guillemots - Thick-billed Murres - Fatheads - Jim Willett |
We had our compulsory team briefing and safety training
including lifeboat drill and then it was deck time before dinner which of
course was followed by more time on deck staring at the sea on an evening that
would never change and would become morning without the light changing.
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| Fulmar - Jim Willett |
| Fulmar |



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