FROM STEELY TO FLUFFY WINTER AT 70*N ( TROMSØ, N.NORWAY)
Every day in this season in Triomsø is lighter than the
day before ,
with some 8 minutes longer sunshine. By now the sun is up 'as early as'
10am; it may not seem much to you, but is an enormous change for us, after
two months with no visible sun at all. With the longer days and the 2 ft of
fresh snow, the possibilities for skiing are also much much better, finally.
Our winter has been 'easy' until now, and special in
one regard: very
little snow. Until quite recently we had only 8 inches of snow on the
ground which is quite uncommon for Tromsø in winter; other places in the
disrtrict had no snow at all! But we had a very cold spell last week:
temperatures down to -15*C here in town, in itself not all that cold
(Tromsø is on an island , surrounded by open sea water, and this makes both
that the temperatures never get very low, but also that it feels often
quite chilly). This time we had force 8 winds to cope with and the radio
warned that with the chill factor the real temperature was close to -43*C,
and please to be careful for frost damages. In the forest the snow had
compacted into a hard crust, on the path of steely ice, and the whole
ambience was of naked trees, steely frost and hard winter.
The birds coped well enough, it seems, and the few
regulars all were
there (although the Greenfinches stopped coming to my feeder). Amazingly
enough, just during this cold snap the volunteers who ventured out on the
outermost skerries to find the oiled birds after the shipwreck of the 'John
R', found two most unexpected wintering birds: a Rock Pipit and a Winter
Wren! Probably the combination of very little snow and the proximity of the
intertidal as a feeding area made this possible.(Earlier this winter
somebody also reported a wintering Dunnock.)
Three days ago the weather finally changed and the
winds veered to the
west: the Atlantic depressions had battled down the outermost parts of the
great high over the Kola peninsula. Westerlies here always bring
precipitation and less cold weather, and this has happened also this time:
some 2 ft of rather wet, sticky snow were dumped on the island, yesterday
during a stormy period it even turned to sleet for a while. Today is a
clear windy day with rapidly moving clouds and probably some snow showers
still. In the morning when I woke up, the sound of the snow-'fresers',
small petrol-driven machines that gobble up the snow in front and blow it
out in a wide arc on top (Easily leading to neighbour quarrels where there
is little room for the snow) was everywhere, and my neighbour , with whom I
share a snow-freser, even very kindly had taken my long and steep driveway
together with his own, before I even was up.
The forest looks quite different now. Gone are all the steely hard ice
patches on the path and the naked black tree branches. Instead you shuffle
through fluffy snow, and to all the branches cling large blobs of wet snow,
with in between frozen water drops, and frozen half-melted snow, that
glistens and twinkles in the sunlight. The birds were also more active, it
seems. Two days ago I saw a Creeper, and this morning a large mixed flock
of tits made me suddenly stop, because one sounded as if he had a serious
throat condition. Fortunately I had my glasses with me for once, and so
could track down at least two of the fluffiest of all our titmouse, the
Siberian Tit. This is normally very much a sedentary inland bird, and this
is only the third time in 28 years I have seen any here on the island. A
beautiful and unexpected surprise on an unexpectedly beautiful day, after
all the snow , sleet and high winds of yesterday!
And the year list? The Creeper Certhia familiaris, the Siberian Tits Parus
cinctus, and a Goshawk Accipiter gentilis that I saw fly over my forest
patch the other day (The same day that people brought in an enormous
Goshawk female, found that outside a school here on the island, no doubt
after a manoeuvering mistake during the chasing of a Hooded Crow), have
brought the list all the way up to 22! It will no doubt at least be trebled
next week, during 10 days in Germany and Holland.
Wim Vader,
Tromsø Museum
9037 Tromsø,
Norway
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