Elizabeth's Bird Journal

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 64

One of our student researchers, Elizabeth Thomas from Smith College in Massachusetts, has been keeping a journal of the birds she has seen while at Svalbard. We though that some of you might enjoy a peek at her journal entries . . . . . .

Elizabeth writes:
Of course I was excited when I received my acceptance letter to this program at Kapp Linné. However, I was ecstatic when, during my internet search for more information on Svalbard, I learned that this archipelago is a migratory bird “hot spot”. I began birding as a toddler, in a backpack carried by my dad, and my love for birds has only grown since then. Svalbard is particularly interesting for me because I grew up in Central New York, a four-hour drive from the ocean at 42 degrees N latitude. At 78 degrees N, Svalbard has a plethora of Arctic seabirds, all new and exciting for me!

After two weeks here of 24-hour light, cruising through icebergs on Isfjord and working at Lake Linné in sunny bliss and driving, windy rain, here is a sampling of the birds I’ve seen:

17 July 2004
The small, quiet birds that flit around Longyearbyen and Isfjord Radio are Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis). There is a female with two hungry fledglings. We watch them most mornings out of the dining room window. I’m impressed that such little birds are able to survive in this harsh climate!
When Hanne brought us up Adventdalen to her permafrost monitoring sites, a flock of Barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) was making noise across the valley. Their black and white markings remind me of Canada geese.

18 July 2004
On the cliffs above Nybyen, the small town up valley from Longyearbyen where we stayed, hundreds of Little auks (Alle alle) zoom around in flocks above their nests. Seabird colonies are common on the cliffs in Svalbard. They’re easy to spot because vegetation grows well beneath the colonies, thanks to the large amounts of nutrients from their poop.

20 July 2004
We caught a ride on Stockholm, a 40m long Swedish ship, out to Isfjord Radio. This was a perfect birding opportunity. Before we had set off, we saw seals floating by, riding a distant iceberg. We watched Black guillemots (Cepphus grylle), little black seabirds the size of a pigeon with bright white spots on their wings, splash around in the frigid water around the ship, fishing and washing themselves. We also saw Glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus) and Black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) flying by. When the boat pushed off and began weaving its way among icebergs, it stirred up schools of small fish, which meant that large numbers of gulls, kittiwakes, Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea), Black and Common guillemots (Uria aalge) and puffins (Fratercula arctica) followed in our wake, soaring just above the water and then folding their wings and diving *splash* into the water, reappearing moments later with a bill full of fish. Graceful fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) also followed the ship, gliding alongside of us and watching us as we watched them from the bow.

21 July 2004
First day at Linnévatnet. As we pulled the Zodiac out to the lake, I watched fulmars soaring around just offshore. A flock of female Common Eiders (Somateria mollisssima) flew by as we hiked over beautiful tundra covered in flowers and divided neatly into polygons by ice wedges. Caleb was dive-bombed by an Arctic tern when he walked out from the South Hut to help pull the boat up onto the beach.

23 July 2004
While TROLLing on the lake with Steve and Melanie, we watched a pair of puffins fly around, making their chainsaw-like noise. We also saw a Red-throated loon (Gavia stellata) fly over us as we boated down to the south end of the lake in the morning. Edith tells me she thinks a pair of Arctic terns has a nest on the beach near the South Hut, which would explain why they keep dive-bombing everybody when we walk out to the boat.

26 July 2004
A pair of Long-tailed skuas (Stercorarius longicaudus) flew over us as we walked along the 6,000 year-old beach ridge to Linnévatnet. Their screams sound like gulls, only they don’t call as often or as persistently. While waiting on shore for the ride back to the north end this afternoon, I got my binoculars out and looked closely every time the terns landed on the beach, trying to find their egg. I finally found it, very close to the boom for our boat, which we had placed on the beach. Lucky we didn’t crush it! It is perfectly camouflaged, the same color as the grey-brown phyllite pebbles around it. I wouldn’t have seen it if it weren’t for its round shape.

27 July 2004
Climbed up to Kongressvatnet, above Linnévatnet, with Caleb. We saw a Common loon on the lake. It called several times and then dove and swam around but stayed close enough to keep an eye on us. We also saw a Black guillemot swimming around on the lake. On our climb back down, Caleb found a large symmetrical white egg, probably a goose egg, that had already hatched.

28 July 2004
The tern egg is gone. I think the foxes that live at the north end of the lake probably took it home for their kits.

30 July 2004
Very windy and rainy day. Walked from the South Hut south to Linnébreen’s moraine collecting sediment samples. Long-tailed skuas flew around the valley despite the bad weather. Saw black guillemots on the lake, and watched fulmar fly around over the lake, which I found unusual because they are everywhere over the fjord, but I had never seen them at the lake before.

31 July 2004
Third day of bad weather. Besides the terns that are constantly guarding their nests on the island, we saw a flock of female Common eiders as we launched the boat in the morning. Caleb, Al and I followed a purple sandpiper as we walked out towards the stream gauging station. It was doing its broken wing act, trying to lure us away from its nest. We didn’t want to disturb it too much, so we followed it where it wanted us to go and then watched it all of a sudden get up and fly away, back to its precious babies.

1 August 2004
The second group to walk out to the lake today, which I wasn’t part of because I had left early to head to the glacier, had the pleasure of escorting a juvenile goose from the beach ridge up to the lake. They named him ‘Mr. Bill’ and were worried that he might be eaten by the fox family that has its den near the lake. Mr. Bill didn’t follow them to the boat, so that was the last they saw of him. When Caleb, Phil and I got back from the glacier, Nick was telling us about Mr. Bill. I turned around and to look at the shoreline, and there he was! Mr. Bill was walking along on the beach. We watched him walk by and then disappear to the southeast. I have no idea why a young goose, still flightless, would be wandering for such great distances alone, and why he would attach himself to a group of humans crossing the coastal plain.

2 August 2004
Back up to Kongressvatnet with Caleb and Steve. We saw a Purple sandpiper wandering on the lakeside.

3 August 2004
Weather was finally nicer today. Saw a young Arctic tern learning how to fly, while both parents flew around, guarding and watchful as we boated underneath. Saw four Barnacle geese running along the shores of the lake as we landed the boat at the end of the day.

4 August 2004
Despite the bad weather, we decided to make a run for the glacier, where we had several tasks to complete. On our way back in the late afternoon, a frantic parent tern showed his wrath when we unknowingly came too close to his chick. One tiny little bird, weighing no more than 100g, sent all three of us running when he started diving at us with his sharp beak bared. At one point during the chase, the tern nearly pooped on Caleb’s pack, and Steve and I were doubled over laughing and trying to keep our faces out of the way of the tern’s beak. The tern dove so close to my face that I felt the breeze from his wings against my cheek. We also saw a herd of five reindeer.

5 August 2004
On the boat ride down to the South Hut in the morning, I spotted a small duck which I hadn’t seen before. I was pretty sure that it was a female long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis), but had to check in the bird book when I returned to the station. Sure enough, it was. The long-tailed female duck is diminutive, with a long pointy tail and a bright white patch on her cheek that stands out from her brown and tan body.

6 August 2004 Day 9 of wind and rain. I took the day off from the field and stayed at the station to work and read articles. In the afternoon, I walked to the coast with Phil and Caleb, where we watched flocks of Purple sandpipers flit along the cliffs. Flocks of Barnacle geese colonized the small lakes that dot the shoreline, while on the breaking surf a few hundred meters offshore, rafts of Eider ducks floated and fished. A Ringed plover, little orange legs topped by a brown and white tuxedo and a bandit face, (Charadrius hiaticula) picked its way along the gravel beach. A constant stream of kittiwakes, terns and fulmar glided by on the updrafts that rise off of the cliffs, seabird highway. Just before we returned to the station, we saw an Arctic fox slinking along the shoreline. The sun finally came out in the afternoon, giving us a spectacular evening, the mountains across the fjord finally visible and awash in sunlight.

7 August 2004 The northerly that came through yesterday brought cold, dry, calm, sunny weather. Good day to get out to the lake and to the glacier to get work done. Caleb and I took GPS points at my sampling stations, measured ablation stakes and searched for the firn line on the glacier. On our walk out in the morning, we saw a fox loping down from a small side cirque. He was a beautiful chocolate color with a caramel blonde belly, a very different color than the foxes we’ve seen in the den on the north shore of the lake. On our climb down the ice, we heard a flock of geese flying overhead, but couldn’t see them because of the clouds. The goslings have almost grown their adult plumage. The geese are all flocking together and feeding, readying for their fall migration.

8 August 2004
Slow day at the lake. Saw a flock of 10 Barnacle geese and a group of 4 Pink-Footed geese. Pink-Footed geese are quite distinctive when they fly. They have brown bodies and white wings with a large black stripe. Mr. Bill, the gosling who followed us around, must have been a Pink-Footed goose.

9 August 2004
Saw a trio of Ruddy turnstones, one male and two females. The male has distinctive orange, black and white splotches on his head and back. The females are more drab, brown and white. All three of them were standing 20m from our boat when we pulled offshore to go core the lake bottom.

10 August 2004
Today was the longest we’ve had in the field yet. We left at 9am, headed up to the glacier, where we took samples and measured ablation stakes all day, and we were back at Isfjord Radio at 10:30pm. When we arrived at the South Hut towards the end of the day, a flock of more than 50 Barnacle geese was rafted north of the small island.

12 August 2004
Ida Marie, one of our Norwegian cooks, left the garage door open today because a Snow bunting has decided to take residence in the rafters above the tractor. She’s worried that it will get stuck in there without food.

Another day at the glacier and in the streambed downstream from the glacier’s terminus collecting sediment samples. Towards the end of the day, we were walking along the stream and went directly under where an Arctic tern was fishing. I watched it hover above the stream. It would suddenly fold its wings and dive into the water, emerging with a fish. The flocks of geese are growing larger. They fly restlessly between the lake and the small ponds by the coast at Isfjord Radio, readying for their southerly migration, which will begin sometime before mid-September.