A five year-birds day, without really trying
A month ago, I sent out a short piece, telling that my Tromsø year list for 2022 stood at 6 birds, and explaining why this was so. As usual in such cases, the seventh bird arrived just after I had sent out the story: a couple of Greenfinches on the feeder. This is now one of our most common winter land birds, even though it was still completely absent when I moved to Tromsø in 1973. But after that nothing happened on the year bird front for a month. Every day there was more daylight, and on 21 January we had our official Soldag, the day when theoretically the sun is visible for a few minutes on the southern horizon (not the real horizon, mountains in the way). Even so, I myself have not seen the sun in 2022 before yesterday! The reason for that is that we have had ‘interesting weather’ in January. Rainy the first days, then a fresh load of snow (65cm), followed by a fierce SW storm with a lot of rain and much damage on the coast (Tromsø is a bit in lee for westerlies). Two days later we had a still more severe NW storm, that dumped a fresh load of 80 cm snow. (I just saw that in January on 26 days, there had been force 9 winds or stronger somewhere in Norway, so we get a lot of weather). The last days we have nice quite calm winter weather, with temp. around -10*C. But, typical for these last years, covid came in the way: my daughter and son in law, living upstairs in the same house, contracted the disease (not too bad, we are all fully vaccinated), so I had to be in quarantaine for 5 days (Just yesterday, these severe rules have been discontinued; Norway will now try to live with the pandemic; the medicine threatened to be more damaging than the disease itself.)
So last Saturday I still was home bound, as were the adults upstairs, staying in the bedroom, while their two daughters cared for them. When daylight came, now already before 10am, I took my field glasses and as usual, looked out over the sound, some 100m away, and 45m further down. Up till then this had been in vain every time, but this time I watched a Great Cormorant flying over the water (there is no mistaking a cormorant, even at this distance), and a small flock of Common Eiders on the water. An hour later my daughter whatsapped from upstairs and said there were a lot of birds on the feeder; of course they were gone when I watched, but luckily the flock returned, Greenfinches and Great Tits. But there was one different tit among them, nicely black and white, no tie, small but feisty, a Willow Tit, bird nr 10. And in the maple in the middle of the lawn there was a much more unexpected bird: a beautiful gleaming-black male European Blackbird! That is a bird that ‘should not be here’, as Tromsø is too far north. But these blackbirds are part of the slow but steady wave of more southern birds that gradually expand northwards, and this is in fact the third time I have seen a blackbird here in winter, always males. Bird nr 11! And half an hour later, another, still more successful newcomer turned up at the feeder, a lone Blue Tit. Bird nr 12!
It is now once again possible to walk to the museum, where I still work on my amphipods, via Folkeparken, where school classes and Kindergarten kids have a wonderful time on the sledging slopes. The first part is on an almost biblical ‘narrow path’; if you deviate only slightly from this right path, you sink deeply into the snow! I have not seen any more year birds since last Saturday (No gulls at all yet, strangely; there should be Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls). But just this morning I had another surprise: a flock of at least 25 Fieldfares, feasting in a Rowan (Mountains Ash) tree, on the frozen berries! So they have not yet all disappeared.
It will be at least a month, before the first migrants return, so my year list will remain puny, unless I succeed in my plans to visit my partner in The Netherlands next month. An hour in Riet’s small garden probably will yield also at least 12 birds.
Wim Vader, Tromsø, Norway
