FIRST MIGRANTS RETURNING TO TROMSØ, N.NORWAY
Our 2003/04 winter continues to be an uncommonly pleasant one, with
temperatures around freezing, and quite a lot of sun,. This has caused much
snow to be sublimated, leaving bare, hard-frozen brownish fields near the
shore, and often oily-slippery snow-paths through the Folkeparken (I carry
the plasters to show this). The last days are better, though, as it has
snowed a little now and then. The ten minutes walk from my home to the
museum through Folkeparken, starting out with a careful descent along the
main road downhill, before ducking between two gardens to find the footpath
through the remnant birch forest and spruce plantations, has the last weeks
contained a novelty: a House Sparrow cock has taken up territory in a
garden along the road, and he is 'tsjilping' (as we onomatopeically call
that in Dutch) tirelessly in order to attract a female--- the nearest patch
of territories is near the shop, a few hundred meters downhill, and as
sparrows are quite resident, I am in doubt whether he will succeed. In my
garden, a bit further uphill, House Sparrows are a definite rarity.
The walk itself is still the same as it has been all winter, and there is
not really a morning chorus to talk about, although the ubiquitous
Greenfinches try hard to provide some backdrop of bird sounds. As my good
friend Franz Krapp has pointed out to me, I have hitherto been too harsh on
these greenfinches---which now finally have discovered my new feeder in the
garden, and throng it almost all day long--: only the irritated-sounding
rasp was considered by me to be the song of this species, while Franz --as
it turns out with comoplete support of the literature---also considers the
pleasant rolling trill at different pitches, and even the shorebird -like
'eeyuu' calls, to be an integral part of Geenfinch song. I stand corrected;
I was led astray by the fact that the rasp quite often is produced on its
own, and that it then often looks as if the bird goes and sits specially in
the top of a tall (by our standards only) tree, while the rest of the
repertoire quite regularly is produced as it where 'in passing', while the
birds are moving through the trees. As before, the other small birds I
hear in the mornings are the Great and Willow Tits---and as yet more call
notes and scolding than regular song even in these winter active birds---
and the Bullfinches. Overhead Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls call
their melodious long-calls (we are close to the seashore here)
And of course Hooded Crows and Magpies are everywhere. I saw the first
magpie fly with a stick, something they start doing quite early in spring.
(Always reminding me of my weather-pessimistic friend in Newfoundland, who
years ago wrote---I think in early May: "The birds are flying with sticks,
mistakenly thinking it will be spring soon. They are fools!!". Those must
have been crows, as there are no magpies in Newfoundland.) Although the
Hooded Crows make stick nests the same way as the magpies do (albeit
without a roof), I always wonder how it can be that I see the magpies fly
with sticks or tug energetically to wrench them loose all the time all
spring, while I only rarely see crows fly with sticks. Do they repair their
nests more rarely, or what?
Tromsø Museum has this year set up an interactive internet-programme where
the people of the region can see when the migrant birds arrive, and where
they also can send in their own observations. The site ---of course in
Norwegian--is at http://www.imv.uit.no/trekkfugl/index.html, and as you
probably already guessed, you enter it by clicking the 'start her' button.
We have chosen 19 common migrants, which many local people know well
enough. You can see the list, as well as the average date at which the
birds return by clicking 'Når kan vi forvente trekkfuglene tilbake?' (=when
can we expect the migrants back), where the first column gives the average
return date, and the second specially early dates. The bird species in that
table are the following 19, in order of return date: tjeld(=oystercatcher),
fiskemåse (=Common Gull), stær (=Common Starling), snøspurv (=Snow
Bunting), vipe (N. Lapwing), bokfink (=Chaffinch), grågås (Greylag Goose),
fjellvåk (Rough-legged Hawk), linerle (=White Wagtail), rødstilk
(=Redshank), bjørkefink (=Brambling), rødvingetrost (=Redwing), gransanger
(=Chiffchaff), heilo (Eur. Golden Plover), svart-hvit fluesnapper (=Pied
Flycatcher), brushane (=Ruff), løvsanger (Willow Warbler), rødnebbterne
(Arctic Tern), and gjøk (=Common Cuckoo). A few other also common and
popular birds had to be excluded, as they occasionally winter in our area,
the most important of those are the Curlew and the Fieldfare.
Until now (as you can see by clicking the 2004-observations) we only have
got in observations of Common Gull, Oystercatcher and Starling, although
the newspapers already have noted the first wagtail too, and we expect to
see the first snow buntings any day now. Not me, though, as I am off to the
UAE for my son's wedding, and the chance to view quite different birds in
the coming two weeks.
Wim Vader,
Tromsø Museum
9037 Tromsø,
Norway
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