Thanks to readers who sent in their photos. Today we have ecologist Susan Harrison‘s batch of photos of Arctic seabirds. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Visit to an Arctic seabird island
On a May trip to the Arctic regions of Finland and Norway, one of the highlights was a visit to the seabird colony on Hornoya, a tiny island in the Barents Sea that is home to something like 80,000 nesting birds.
Hornoya is reached by a 15-minute boat ride from Vardo, a small town where Norwegian dried fish were for many centuries traded for Russian grain, and where an infamous series of 17th-century witch trials took place. Despite its age, Vardo lacks historic buildings since the retreating Germans leveled it in 1944. Vardo now gets by on fishing, ecotourism, and a radar antenna array that may possibly be listening to Russian submarines in nearby Murmansk.
Vardo with a Yellow-Billed Loon (Gavia adamsii), found only in the high Arctic, floating in the foreground:
Yellow-Billed Loon closeup:
Black-Legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) nests festooning Vardo buildings:
Common Murres (Uria aalge) on the water, and the Hornoya Island tour boat returning to Vardo:
Common Murres circling Hornoya Island and nesting on its cliffs:
Common Murre closeup:
Razorbills (Alca torda) mating and nesting:
European Shags (Gulosus aristotelis) courting and nesting:
Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) socializing and nesting:
Birdwatchers waiting for the return boat to Vardo:
Very nice set! Thank you.
As always, thank you Susan. Gee, until watching your and Jerry’s globe-spanning adventures, I never knew that a successful career in biology involved such wanderlust.
I love the name “Razorbill”!
I love the way that Vardo’s homes (like those of many other towns in Arctic regions) are painted in an array of bright colors. And thank you also for the beautiful bird photos from this enchanting realm. You surely do get around!
The birdwatchers are well-camouflaged and hard to pick out against the background. Do they have many predators?
Well, if you were right next to Russia….
😸😸😸
Nice. Thanks for the smile!
Beautiful photos! Thanks!
What a cool place and top notch birds. Thanks Ms. Harrison for your content.
I’d love to visit that island and I’m not even a bird person!
D.A.
NYC
Thank you for the wonderful photos! Do you know what the temperature of the water was when you were there? Or whether that part of the Barents freezes over in winter (or used to)?
The air temps were just above freezing, not counting quite a bit of wind chill, so I’m guessing the water temps were similar. There is sea ice in winter and we saw some of the remnants of it. Spring was quite late this year, which wasn’t in our favor!
Fabulous photos! Thanks
Beautiful. The European Shags are a gorgeous bird! I’ve always loved the calls of the loons. Thank you.
Sorry for the late entry, but was wondering if you had any sense of the impact bird flu might be having on sea birds there. I heard one birder from Scotland say his razorbacks were hit rather hard.
We didn’t hear anything about that during our visit; sorry not to have more info.