Fw: Phalarope bonan

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LATE SUMMER IN TROMSØ

Most of NW Europe has suffered an exceptionally hot and dry summer in 2018, creating many problems for the farmers, and causing many forest fires. But here at 70*N our summer has been mixed: May very nice and warm—little snow left in the Mountains–, June grim, cold and wet, and July very much up and down, but with a few wiffs of the hot summer of the rest of Europe for 2-3 days in a row, and even the first ever ‘tropical night’ (i.e. temp. never below 20*C all night) in Tromsø and even on the outlying island of Vannøy, where Riet and I just then spent a few days. Now we are back to normal: temperatures of 9-15*C at midday, and regular rain showers.

It is typical late summer. The many luxuriant flowers of midsummer: The enormous Tromsø-palms (an exotic Hogweed Heracleum), Meadowsweet Filipendula , Alpine Sow Thistle Cicerbita and Rosebay (or Fireweed) Chamaerion have lost most of their flowers, and the many different shades of green of spring have melted together to a more monotonous green, which soon will differentiate again into the many golden and red colours of autumn. A few flowers have waited until now to come into full lower: white Grass of Parnassus Parnassia, and the beautiful blue Field Gentians Gentianella, which every late summer I search for and find.

July has as always been a somewhat dull time for birding: there is very litle bird song—a few Willow Warblers and the always irrepressible Greenfinches, and many waterbirds have young and/or are moulting and hide. So driving along our roads one mostly meets Magpies, of those we have any number, Hooded Crows, gulls and often also White Wagtails. But today the shorebird autumn migration clearly had got started. At the wetland, or rather wet meadows, of Tisnes some 30 km from Tromsø on the island of Kvaløya, about which I have probably written too many times already, there now were Ruffs everywhere and all three pools held phalaropes, 10 altogether, more than I ever have seen before here on Tisnes, where they do not nest; these are Red-necked Phalaropes, Ph. lobatus, our local breeders, and I see a few here in late summer most years. There were also a few ducks in the pools, mostly Mallards and a few wigeons, and of course the local Common Gulls, that have a large colony here. Tens of swallows foraged over the wet meadows and the shoreline (We have several species of ‘intertidal midges’ here); to my surprise the flock did not only contain the usual Sand Martins (Bank Swallows, in the ever mediating Norway called Sandsvale= Sand Swallow!), but also Barn Swallows—of which a few pairs nest in a barn here on Tisnes–, and even quite a number of House Martins, which nest nowhere closer than N. Finland. They will all probably soon leave us. An Arctic Skua (Parasitic Jaeger) used the flood waters for a thorough bath and clean-up.

In the innermost bight, where the flood was just coming in, there were more shorebirds: more Ruffs, Ringed Plovers, Dunlins, with a single Little Stint, and I also heard the tju-WEET of the Spotted Redshank

On the way back I stopped and walked a small round on the Langnes peninsula near the airport, where there is a small sandy beach, which often attracts shorebirds at high water. Here earlier in the season it is complicated to walk, as the local Arctic Terns are quite aggressive; Ringed Plovers also nest here. Now there were tens of Ringed Plovers, and more than 100 Dunlins, again with 2 Little Stints in the flock. Also here most flowers were gone, but I discovered two clumps of a plant I have never seen here before, a Speedwell Veronica species with very long flowers; maybe a garden escape? I’ll have to ask my colleagues at Botany.

Wim Vader, Tromsø, Norway