SAME PROCEDURE AS EVERY YEAR
Every year on the 1 of May, a free day here in Norway, I drive the same ca
250km round trip 'around the Balsfjord', walk the same stretches and stop
at the same places; and of course basically see the same birds year after
year. Early May is late winter here at 70*N, but it is also the time that
the first migrants return from the south. And the route is wonderfully
scenical; I wish I could show you the amalgamate of fjords, mountains, snow
and sea, all bathed in the wonderful clear light of spring, but before much
has become green. Some willow trees bloom, the alders stretch their buds,
but the birches are still largely asleep , and on the ground only the
yellow stars of the Coltsfoot Tussilagi farfara (a typical roadside plant)
give some inkling of the coming growth season. This last winter has been
very benign in many respects: not too much snow on the ground (almost never
more than 1 meter), and an amazingly early snow melt; my garden was
practically snow free 22 April, fully one week earlier than ever before
since I moved to my present house in 1974. Fresh snow did fall on 23 and 24
April, to be sure, and it has remained cool and wintery ever since, but still!
Tromsø Museum has an internet interactive programme mapping migration in
our province (see http://www.tmu.uit.no/trekkfugl/index.html), and so we
follow this year's arrival dates with even more interest than otherwise.
And as several of the normal forest birds have been seen already several
places in the last week, I started out on my round with great expectations.
It started out good too; already in my own garden I woke up (at least two
hours late, I must confess----but at my age one does not lightly spoil a
good night's sleep on a free day) to the presence of the quietly beautiful
Bullfinches, the more plebejan Greenfinches and the dapper Willow Tit on
and below my hanging feeder. I drove via the small lake Prestvannet on top
of our island of Tromsøya (where the Red-throated Loons nest every year),
but that was still an unbroken expanse of snow. Otherwise during the first
miles 'all the usual subjects' were seen from the car window: three species
of gulls (with a young Glaucous Gull as a bonus in the harbour), the eiders
that are such an integral part of our fjords, small flocks of quite
colourful Long-tailed Ducks , fat Mallards hugging the shore line or
prospecting arable wet fields in pairs, the Cormorants on their favourite
wreck in the harbour (Only five left, though; in mid-winter there are at
least 20), Oystercatcher pairs strung out at regular intervals along the
stony algae-covered intertidal, and the Hooded Crows and Magpies that
dominate the land fauna. (Amazingly, I managed not to see a Raven all day,
a rare feat here in winter).
The Ramfjord, a much more Arctic side-fjord of the Balsfjord, which I have
to circumnavigate in order to get where I want to be, the south facing
hills of the kantornes area, showed a most unusual aspect this day, as
there were large areas of open water, and otherwise quite rotten ice
without any ice-fishermen; usually the ice is safe here until mid or late
May, and ravens patrol the holes of the ice fishermen to scavnege on the
remains of gutted fish. My first stop was as usual at the river mouth at
Andersdalen, and there I often see the first White wagtails of the
year---not this time, though, although friends I met a little later told me
they had had them exactly at the same spot half an hour before my arrival.
But the Lapwings and Curlews were present as always, the latter already
practising their wonderful bronze display songs.
Still, the absence of the wagtails was an omen, for at the next stop, the
alder and birch hill forest under the raven and kestrel cliffs, where I
every year use to enjoy 'the first tuning up for the spring bird chorus',
the forest was eerily silent, and even the ravens were absent seemingly. A
1km walk along the road brought nothing else than a few not singing
Chaffinches (and maybe the far-away oo-eet of a Chiffchaff): no thrushes,
no Bramblings, no Dunnock, no European Robin, and no Chiffchaff song.
Spooky!! It was here I met my friends, and they told that last Saturday
many of these birds had been present and singing (and yes, yes, I know, I
should have been earlier, of course). But now my day list remained
stationary, and at the next walk, still closer to the fjord and through an
area of farms, fields and coppices, with a few good intertidal areas, the
jinx was still on: No shorebirds to talk of, except for Lapwings, Curlews
and Oystercatchers, the local White-tailed sea Eagle pair was somewhere
else for the day, and once more , no bird song at all. (Under such
circumstances ones headaches become suddenly more dominant.) But
fortunately naturalists always find something to cheer them up: a beautiful
butterfly, the first of the year, a queen Bumblebee ditto, and suddenly a
Wood Pigeon tuned up, and a small group of Grey Herons flew into the
intertidal.
In this part of the Balsfjord (and also further in) there are always small
flocks of Velvet Scoters (feeding i.a. on the eggs of the local Capelin
population of this fjord), and I also managed to see two Yellow-billed
Loons, albeit from far away, before they leave for the Russian Arctic to
nest. The last walk in this area, again through alder and birch forest,
yielded a Snipe zigzagging up from the ditch along the road, many Great
Tits, and a far away Chaffinch in full song, sitting at the very tip of one
of the planted fir trees on the slope.
So onward to the Sagelvvatnet, the productive shallow freshwater lake at
the bottom of the Balsfjord, as always via the petrol station, (as petrol
here is 65 øre cheaper than in Tromsø, where we pay surtax to finance the
many tunnels in town). The landscape here is quite different and has more
of an inland character, with pines much to the fore. But as I halfways had
expected, Sagelvvatnet was as fully frozen over still and snow-covered as
Prestvannet had been, the only open water being at the inlet of the river
Sagelva, that runs from the lake to the fjord. Here three pairs of Mallards
had gotten company of three pairs of Goldeneyes (often breeding in nest
boxes here in the inland), and a farm with horses yielded the first pair of
White Wagtails after all.
Back to the fjord, where my last Balsfjord walk again was somewhat
disappointing; it added a pair of Shelducks, and more Grey Herons and
Velvet Scoters, but not the hoped for Horned (Slavonian) Grebes , or
even Red-necked Grebes that also occur annually here on migration. There
is no road along that side of the Balsfjord, so one has to cross over,
along now entirely snow-covered fields, to the no less scenic next fjord to
the south, Malangen, a place with for some reason always many Greylag
Geese. The rest of the road along Malangen was uneventful, only punctuated
by the first Whimbrel of the year in a field on its own; the ferry arrived
nicely just after I came to Vikran (I never remember which routes are valid
on 1 May, so this was more luck than calculation), and so I had the time to
visit my favourite wetland of Tisnes, where once more there were many pairs
of Greylag Geese, but also two pairs of Ping-footed Geese, on their way to
Svalbard. The same maybe true for the single King Eider drake still
lingering among the hundreds of Common Eiders of this spot (It may also
have been love, as he consorted with a Common Eider female!). But the 'last
first of the year', a dapper drake Teal, had no doubt just arrived, and
will probably breed locally, Tisnes being a haven for many duck species.
Thirty-five species during a long day. Even allowing for the fact , that
both my eyes and ears are none to good, so I tend to overlook things, this
still kames clear that you should not come to Tromsø in order to see a
large diversity of birds; nor, in fact, apart from the seabird colonies, to
see large numbers, as the density of especially land birds here is much
lower than further south in Europe. But we have still many nice and
interesting birds up here, and I bet you that virtually nowhere else are
the wrappings, the scenery around you, so spectacular as here in and around
Tromsø! I'll mail the bird list, compared with those of 2001 and 2002, in a
separate mail.
Wim Vader,
Tromsø Museum
9037 Tromsø,
Norway
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