SUMMER TO AUTUMN IN TROMSØ, N. NORWAY
This week the schools started up again---both my Tromsø granddaughters now go
to primary school--, at Tromsø Museum the colleagues come back from holidays or
fieldwork, and the evenings start to get dark again, after two months of
midnight sun. The meadows are still green, mostly freshly mown, with the white
plastic 'tractor eggs' with the hay still lying scattered around in the fields.
But the marshes look mostly yellow and brown by now, with as yet not too much
autumn-red, and many of the birches are yellowing. In the road verges the
enormous 'Tromsø palms' (a Heracleum) are also yellowing fast and stick out
like a sore thumb. Few flowers left by now, mostly stalwarts like Yarrow (now
often dominant), Sneezewort, buttercups and clovers. The Fireweed (or Rosebay
Chamaenerion), so dominant many places earlier, has by now lost most of its
flowers, but it still smoulders, as the many fruits-pods are also conspicuously
dark red, and the plants grow in dense patches. We have, in contradistinction
to most of S. Norway and much of W. Europe, had a quite good summer here north;
not very warm usually, but a lot of cool sunny northerly weather, with little
rain. As a consequence there have been few mushrooms as yet, but today i found
two spp of Coprinus, and some small brownish jobs have come up in numbers on
our lawn.
I still feed with sunflower seeds in my feeding tubes, probably more for my own
pleasure than because the birds need it. And there are lots and lots of
Greenfinches on the feeders almost all day, with up to 15 Bramblings (already
moulted) and a few Chaffinches (still in summer finery) on the lawn below. In
the fields there are small flocks of Meadow Pipits everywhere, but it looks
like the wagtails have already gone, as have the martins and the arctic terns.
This is a good time for watching shorebirds on their southwards migration, and
local reports notice that this has been a good breeding year for the small
shorebirds, most probably because this has been as lemming year, so the owls,
raptors and skuas have let the nestlings more or less alone. But I have not
been very good in finding the shorebirds; yesterday the water was too high, and
I did not find any place where the birds stay during flood---much of the shore
is not easy of access. Today I went back on a rising tide, but again I found
surprisingly few birds; at Tisnes the cause may have been the young
White-tailed Sea Eagle that throned on a large rock in the intertidal. Luckily
this year I have discovered a small shallow bight on a little side road near
Kvaløysletta, which I had overlooked for almost 40 years, and there there were
some birds today, on the rising tide. The majority were in fact Starlings: a
tight flock of some 60 birds scoured the intertidal and I suspect fed mostly on
'my' amphipods. But there were also a few real shorebirds; a bunch of Ruffs and
Reeves, 4 Sanderling---an uncommon sight here, especially as they were still in
partial summerdress--, a smattering of Little Stints, and a few Dunlins and
Curlew Sandpipers. (And of course the always present gulls (3 spp),
Oystercatchers and Hooded Crows, as well as a few sentinel Grey Herons)-
At the airport I heard the wonderful calls of a flock of Curlews (one of the
few shorebirds to winter here, albeit in very small numbes), and I also saw two
Greenshanks and a Golden Plover. And at the Tisnes wetlands yesterday a noisy
flock of some 25 Greylag Geese arrived and alighted, probably local breeders.
Here, as every year, a lot of Autumn Gentians Gentianella amarella had just
started to flower; strangely enough here abut half are white, the rest the
normal bluish purple. But this time I sought in vain for the small
yellowish-green Moonwort Bostrychia ferns, that I have found here every late
summer until now. The fields are changing, being grazed by horses this year; or
my eyesight may start to let me down---I did find the also minute Selaginella
plants, though.
We had Indian summer this last week, with much sun, coffee outside at the
museum, and temperatures up to almost 20*C. Now we are back at 10-12*, the
normal temperatures for this time of year. We need a bit of rain, for the
mushrooms and the autumn colours. It will come!!
Wim
Vader, Tromsø Museum
9037
Tromsø, Norway
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