CHASING SIGNS OF SPRING AROUND TROMSØ, N.NORWAY
Yesterday, 4 April, was a grey and somewhat drizzly day, with periods with
rain and sleet interspersed with dry hours. As the weather forecast warned
for snow today, and this might make the roads still more difficult, I
decided nevertheless to drive the traditional trip "around the Balsfjord",
a trip of ca 200 miles, with side roads etc. (In fact now, 6 April, we have
ca 10 inches of fresh snow, and still coming down!)
The Balsfjord is a classical fjord, complete with a sill (the
sounds
around the island of Tromsøya), and a number of deeper basins, down to ca
400m. It runs inland to the south from Tromsø (Probably fjords don`t run,
but I do not know what they do instead), and the main road goes along the
eastern shore of this fjord. Balsfjord never freezes over in winter, and
the bottom fauna has a quite Atlantic composition. One of the side fjords,
the Ramfjord, on the other hand, has a lot of freshwater outrun, and this
fjord is frozen all winter, while the bottom fauna contains a lot of arctic
elements.
Before getting to the Ramfjord, I have already seen all the
normal winter
elements of the fjords here: Eiders, Red-throated Mergansers, Cormorants,
Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls, and Oldsquaws. Along the shore pairs
of Oystercatchers stand together every few hundred yards, but few of the
Common Gulls are back as yet: a large flock near Tromsø probably had just
arrived.
The Ramfjord, surrounded by high mountains, is a vast expanse
of snowy
ice, punctuated by the holes of the many ice fishermen, and criss-crossed
by their tracks. Large flocks of large gulls keep the fishermen company,
and also Hooded crows and Ravens patrol the holes.
At the bottom of the Ramfjord I deviate on to the narrow
secondary road
along the northern shore of this fjord. As usual, this road is dangerously
icy or slippery-soapy many places, as the sun does not reach it for many
hours a day.Fortunately there is little aviandistraction here
"Around the corner", back along the Balsfjord, one clearly sees the
influence of exposure. Here the slopes are exposed to the south, and many
places near shore most of the snow has disappeared. At the mouth of a
little river a few Lapwings are foraging on the intertidal mud, and in the
valley here the Willow Grouse are already quite active. (Later in spring
this is also an excellent spot to listen to the cooing of the Black Grouse).
On this "warm shore" I always put my car aside and walk a while
along the
road. The small farmhouses here nearly all have nestboxes for tits,
flycatchers and starlings, and at several houses there are also active
feeders, with a steady stream of Great and Willow tits, and Green- and
Bullfinches. The Greenfinches rasp away in the planted spruce trees, while
the Bullfinches often are to be found in the Alder trees, where they forage
on the still quite small buds. In addition there were lots of Redpolls
(with some Arctic redpolls in between) and also Siskins, a species that is
slowly getting more common in the outer parts of Troms.
(Similarly, it seems as if the Blue Tit Parus caeruleus is
conquering
this area. I did not see any this day, but we have heard of more and more
cases of both wintering and nesting of this basically quite southern
species in northern most Norway during the last few years. There are also
some on the island of Tromsøya, and I think before long this will become a
common bird in the area, especially if helped by putting out nestboxes with
a bit smaller holes).
On the fields the very first flocks of Snow Buntings were
foraging, in
this area always a most welcome sign of spring coming. On the shore a
Shelduck had returned to its traditional nesting-place under an outhouse,
and small flocks of Oldsquaws flew southwards , towards the inner reaches
of the fjord. There large numbers of ducks and grebes congregate to await
the thawing of the ice on the freshwater lakes later in spring. Our "real
birders", with sharp eyes and strong telescopes, have already found quite a
number of Yellow-billed Loons and Red-necked Grebes on the fjord, but the
fjord is many places more than a mile broad, and I found today (with 10x
field-glasses only) only two of the loons and a single grebe; still, both
were new birds for my year-list.
Besides the eiders (much "spring-cooing in the large flocks
now) and the
oldsquaws, the dominant duck on the inner reaches of the fjord is the
Velvet Scoter Melanitta fusca. An additional reason for this concentration
on just this fjord is the presence of a local race of the small fish
Capelin Mallotus villosus in the Balsfjord; the Capelins spawn in the
spring, in very shallow water, and the eggs are very eagerly eaten by the
Scoters!
Another, although not completely reliable sign of spring was
the pair of
Whooper swans in the intertidal halfways down the Balsfjord. Whooper swans
have increased in numbers in this area in the last decades, but a few
sometimes stay over winter, although most migrate to S.Norway. The Greylag
geese had apparently not yet returned, at least I did not see any, not even
in the next fjord malangen, where they traditionally are common nesters.
At the end of the day, I paid a short visit to the wetland of
Tisnes,
then in pouring rain. Here much snow had melted, but the only sign of
spring were the many pairs of Mallards (As I had in fact seen all day);
none of the Common Gulls, that nest here in large numbers, had returned,
nor did I see Curlews or Golden Plovers. So here it looked still very wintery!
At Easter I`ll take the opportunity once more to escape to
Holland, where
signs of spring will be a dime a dozen, I hope.(So "nomail" to Birdchat for
8 days).Happy birding!
Wim Vader, Tromsø Museum
9037 Tromsø, Norway
List of birds observed (*=returned migrants):
Yellow-billed Loon Gavia adamsii
Red-necked Grebe Podiceps grisegena
Cormorant Phalacrocorax c. carbo
*Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus
Mallard Anas platyrhynchos
*Teal A. crecca (1 only)
*Shelduck Tadorna tadorna
Oldsquaw Clangula hyemalis
Velvet Scoter Melanitta fusca
Common Scoter M. nigra
Northern Eider Somateria mollissima
Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator
Willow Grouse Lagopus lagopus
*Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus
*Northern Lapwing Vanellus vanellua
Purple Sandpiper Calidris maritima
Great Black-b. Gull Larus marinus
Herring Gull L. argentatus
*Common Gull L. canus
Feral Pigeon Columba livia
*Starling Sturnus vulgaris
Magpie Pica pica
Hooded Crow Corvus corone cornix
Raven C. corax
Willow Tit Parus montanus
Great Tit P. major
House Sparrow Passer domesticus
Bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula
Greenfinch Chloris chloris
Siskin Carduelis spinus
Redpoll C. flammea
Arctic Redpoll C. hornemanni
*Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis
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