WINTER CAN BE BEAUTIFUL IN TROMSØ, N.NORWAY
After ten days in Holland I returned to a Tromsø still reeling from too
much weather. They had in quick succession had rain, snow, storm, more
snow, pouring rain, thaw, floodings and perilously icy roads (several
people were killed, and that while we generally know quite well how to
drive on icy roads---most roads here are never salted in winter, just
'graveled'). But I was luckily away in Holland, --where a few degrees night
frost also gave much talk of 'winter coming back'--, and when I came home,
temperatures had dipped well below freezing again, and fresh wet snow last
weekend restored the snow depth to ca 1 m on the island. This also greatly
ameliorated the road-ice problems, and one could walk more or less normally
again. Since then we have had several days of beautiful winter weather,
with 5 to 7 degrees frost, no more snow to talk of, and little wind, so
that a lot of snow still clings to the trees and festoons the Folkeparken
as for a winter party. The path I walk to work is a narrow trench of
tramped snow, wihich I can walk on normal shoes with care; trouble only
occurs when I tread wrong (then the snow is soft and you sink to over your
knees), or when I meet people, more often than not walking their dogs
(then the person with the best boots has to step aside into the soft snow)
Daylight has now returned fully, although our days still are shorter than
yours (I trust nobody on these lists lives north of 70*N; I know my friends
on Svalbard are still waiting for the return of the sun), and when I walk
to work in the morning, the 'mountains' of Kvaløya catch the morning sun
and bathe the hill-tops in a rosy sheen, providing our local variety of the
Alpenglühen. When I walk back home around 5 pm, there is now twilight, the
last days with fantastic reddish western skyscapes over those same hills.
Birds there are still very few, but also there life is stirring. yesterday
i heard two Great Tits singing for the first time this winter. One went
'tee tu, tee tu, tee tu', the other 'to TEE, to TEE, to TEE'. Although
their song is so simple that in Holland we talk about 'sawing' tits, every
bird sings slightly differently, and in addition most birds have the choice
of several songs , between which they switch from time to time. The fact
that most Great Tits now have a two tone song, and no longer belt out the
original 'tee tee tu' three-note variety, appears to be an adaptation to
the generally increased noise levels in our modern society. Finnish workers
have found a clear relationship between levels of ambient noise and the
structure of the tit songs, and indeed I still heard a few three note songs
two weeks ago on Schouwen, although even there the two-notes dominated.
The Willow tits have not yet started their spring song, they betray
themselves mainly by their incessant 'tæh tæh tæh' scolding, but also have
a very short 'compressed spiral' song, that they squeeze out while
foraging, and that I mainly hear wintertime.
(I hope these lines do not arrive again adorned with various red peppers.
When I shifted to a new version of Eudora, I suddenly got 'ethical advise'
on my PC of the type 'this message is of a character that make us advise
you to wash out your keyboard with soap, if you understand what we mean'.
They then asked' Will you clean up your message?' or 'Will you send it out
anyway?', and when I chose the latter option, the message went out with
three red peppers as 'potentially obscene material'. This irritated me no
end (The English names of the family Paridae have always been what they are
now, and nobody here gives it further thought), and I have finally
succeeded in switching off these hypocritic and somewhat mealy-mouthed
'ethical warnings' at my end; but I fear the peppers may still persist. In
that case I apologize, but please blame the software, not me!!!.)
A bird that has suddenly returned in numbers the last week(s?) is the
Greenfinch. All January I had seen only a single bird, but now they are
back in force and sit as small ornaments in the tops of the trees, uttering
their almost shorebird-like calls and their cozy rolling trills. Now and
then one even breaks out in full song, but this irritated sounding rasp is
much less pleasing to our ears than the other calls. No doubt Greenfinches
judge that differently.
I played with the thought of calling this little piece 'A three bird walk',
as these are usually the three bird species I encounter on my daily walk to
and from work, but that would be negative bragging, I found out. For of
course there are also Hooded Crows and Magpies (especially today thursday,
when we put out the garbage bags in the mornings), Great Black-backed Gulls
fly overhead--and I have heard the first long calls also here), and many
mornings one hears the distant croaking conversation of our local pair of
Northern Ravens. And if the wind is right, the cooing of the Common Eider
drakes on the sound pervades the entire Folkeparken. But a paradise for
listers Tromsø in winter definitely is not!
Wim Vader,
Tromsø Museum
9037 Tromsø,
Norway
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