Blue Eyed Birder

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

Barnacle Goose

Barnacle Goose - FFH - ring submitted

King Eiders

Pale-bellied Brents

Common Eider

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.

Glaucous Gull

Arctic Tern

Red-throated Diver

Red-throated Diver - Jim Willett

Arctic Terns - Anne Bielamowicz

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.

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 - Jim Willett

the change of direction wheel - Jim Willett

Snow Bunting

Snow Bunting - a female - equally different in sum plum - Jim Willett

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

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.

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

Puffin - Jim Willett

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.

Fulmar - Jim Willett

Fulmar

There was simply more of the same as we headed out although we did see two White-beaked Dolphins with Kitts in tow but it was just so difficult to tear yourself away just in case you missed anything but by 10.30 I called it a ‘night’ and retired for what we be a very good night’s sleep.

Blue Eyed Birder

Monday, 6 July 2026

Day 1 - 12th June 2026 - Svalbard - Spitzbergen & the pack ice with Bird's Wildlife & Nature