sign of life from 70*N

END OF SUMMER IN TROMSØ

I am still alive and living in Tromsø, even though I have fallen silent on the bird lists.

Yesterday morning my lawn in Tromsø, N.Norway (69*50’N) was suddenly full of birds, where there usually is nothing more than the usual magpies and hooded crows, and our ‘house gulls’, the Common Gull. But now, when I looked out (I have the basement apartment) the lawn was full of thrushes, most of them Fieldfares, but with also quite a number of Redwings among them, mostly keeping to less open places. There were also a couple of White Wagtails, a few Redpolls, and in the trees young Willow Warblers. All this is preparatory to the autumn migration; many birds are leaving their territories and flocking together.

Summer 2016 here in Tromsø has not been (as we say here) ‘to shout Hurrah for’: too many days and weeks with grey, wet weather and temperatures around 10-12 *C. But today, although not much warmer, we had a sunny quiet day and I decided to go and check some of my usual haunts, mostly to look for shorebirds, usually the first birds migrating through here. It is late summer here; most of our luxuriant forbs have almost stopped flowering, only the Fireweed Chamaenerion colours some large patches vividly violet, while today I also found a very rich stand of the beautiful late-summer flowers of Felwort Gentianella. The very common and enormous ‘Tromsø palms’ Heracleum are already yellowing, another sign of the end of summer.

I started out at the Langnes area near the airport, about which I have written several times before (I feel I have written several times before about almost every area here, main reason I stopped writing). It is a small low peninsula between a main road and the sea, where many people walk their dogs, and park their cars when they fly (to avoid parking fees; I counted some 40 parked cars in the area today)); there are willow copses, large areas covered with tall forbs, and extensive tidal areas. A skerry just offshore (you can walk there when the water is low enough, we have a 3.5m tidal amplitude) is always used by Cormorants, except in the nesting season, when they move elsewhere; today there were already 5 cormorants there, another sign of the near end of summer. There is a sandy beach, where always Ringed Plovers breed, and where in summer you have to be very careful not to be hit by angry Arctic Terns. Now the plovers were still alarming, but the young could fly; also a few young terns flew around, and the parents still attacked me half-heartedly; but most of the ternshere had gone, and I found a large flock elsewhere. The sandy beach and stony mudflat before it also held quite large groups of sandpipers, today mostly Purple Sandpipers, but also Dunlins, Turnstones and as a surprise a single Red Knot. In addition a snall flock of 6 Lapwings flew up and away when I arrived; this is a species that nests here, but decreases alarmingly in the area; several territories where I always found the birds earlier are now no longer in use. There were also a few Golden Plovers, but I saw no Redshanks nor any other Tringa, and no Ruffs either, usually the most common shorebird on autumn migration here. Lots of wagtails and Meadow Pipits on the beach and this time also many young Northern Wheatears. As usual, several Eiders with young are present, and of course also Oystercatchers and various gulls.

The wetland of Tisnes, som 30 km from Tromsø on the island of Kvaløya, is another place I have written about many times. It is a peninsula of low-lying agricultural wetlands, now sadly for a quite large part taken over by a horse farm; the horses have trampled and largely destroyed a wonderful chalk meadow and its very diverse flower vegetation. Most of the fields have now been mowed and most places the glittering white ‘tractor eggs’ with hay still lie around in the fields (A lone whimbrel was foraging in one of these fields); elsewhere they have already been gathered and lie in neat rows near the barns. Very few shorebirds today at Tisnes: where I saw some 50 Ruffs a week ago, I now saw only a single one. Surprisingly, Barn Swallows were still criss-crossing the area in some numbers, just as last week; this is not at all a common bird so far North and one rarely sees tens together , as is the case here. (The nearby colony of Bank Swallows is deserted now). A few Golden Plovers, a single Lapwing and the unavoidable Oystercatchers were all I could find today. But there was something else: at least 100 Greylag Geese, with quite a number of youngsters, sat close together in one of the Fields; another species flocking preparatory to the autumn migration.

But as you can see; it is largely business as usual here at 70*N.

Wim Vader, Tromsø, Norway

wim.vader@uit.nowim.vader@uit.no>