Spitsbergen, June/July 2011

Some last bird photos from Spitsbergen. Unfortunately I missed the pair of Long-tailed Skuas and nearby Ptarmigan that put on a wonderful show for all comers (I was too busy kayaking around icebergs, I'm afraid) and didn't have the right lens with me for the wonderfully approachable pair of Grey Phalaropes (Red Phalarope really would be so much more appropriate for these birds up here!) at Ny Alesund. I also missed the two photograph-able Ivory Gulls. And next time, I will be sure to pay more attention to the Snow Buntings around Longyearbyen, as they're not so easy to approach elsewhere.

But all in all, yep, a pretty spectacular trip and I'm definitely looking forward to returning in 2012. Fancy joining me?

Spitsbergen, June/July 2011: Land of the Ice Bear

All in all, we saw 9 individual Polar Bears. Of these, one (our first) was rather distant (so much so that even through the telescope, many people were less than convinced by me that this was actually a Polar Bear stalking a couple of seals on the ice edge, rather than yellow snow...) and another was watched again at some distance swimming across the far side of a fjord.

But our time spent with the other seven was utterly, spectacularly memorable. Spectacular being the word of the trip, obviously.

One young female was watched for upwards of 5 hours as she ambled along the coast, swimming out to some low rocky islands to 'graze' on the eider colony there. She enabled amazingly close approach, and really didn't seem bothered by her admirers. Slightly more of a bother to her were the pair of Great Skuas who were very forceful in pushing her off 'their' island, frequently making contact.

Later the same day we came across a mother with two cubs, making their way across an incredibly scenic sheet of sea ice, backed by glaciers and snowy mountains. One of her cubs was having a hard job of keeping up, having managed to get itself onto softer ice and he fell in a couple of times. Meanwhile, a second large adult was rapidly moving towards the family from further down the ice... a VERY exciting encounter, as the mother clearly wanted to put as much space as possible between her family and this interloping adult, who equally obviously wanted to catch them up! And in the middle of it all, the one floundering cub who just couldn't keep up... Sitting in the zodiacs, a good few hundred metres away from the action, we could hear his cries coming across the ice. In the end, he managed to get back to firmer ice, the mother came back to get him, and the family made its way determinedly off towards the mountains, leaving the lone adult mooching about on the ice edge, looking for a different afternoon snack.

Our last two, a big adult male and a second, smaller individual were up on the pack ice, at almost 81 degrees north. Big white beasts in an expanse of white, snow flurries swirling around, Harp Seals porpoising through the water and groups of Little Auks and Brunnich's Guillemots flying past. Arctic magic!

Spitsbergen, June/July 2011: some marvellous mammals

OK, I admit it, I'm teasing just a little by holding back the photos of the big white beast, the world's largest land predator and reason we were accompanied at all times by a rifle or two (even when kayaking!)
But meanwhile...

The variety of land mammal life on Spitsbergen may be pretty low, with just four species (three if you count Polar Bear as a marine mammal, and one of those is an introduced population of the Sibling Vole), but the marine mammals are pretty great, as are the lovely, stumpy Svalbard Caribou (currently thought of as an endemic subspecies, but such a different creature from the leggy beasts of Canada!).

I suspect we were a little unlucky in 'only' finding a couple of Minke Whales and a possible, maybe, distant Sei Whale amongst the cetaceans (in particular, Beluga are out there in good numbers, while Orca, Fin Whale, Humpback Whale and some of the northern dolphins might be expected too). But when you've got Walruses bobbing about in the surf inspecting the zodiacs at close range, little parties of porpoising Harp Seals around the pack ice, the occasional 'massive sausage' Bearded Seal floating past on a floe and an oh-so-friendly Ringed Seal playing with our kayaks... who needs Arctic Fox after all that, anyway? It's always good to have something to come back for...

Spitsbergen, June/July 2011: Little Auks of Fugelsongen

For most of us (well, for me anyway), Little Auks are a very infrequent sighting, either as a stream of tiny black and white whirring dots over the stormy seas off Flamborough Head, struggling north again after being blown south by a winter storm or else a cute (but probably doomed) bird on a random duck pond or coastal ditch...

So it was a pretty impressive experience to find myself sat half way up a scree slope, amongst the rocks and boulders of a Little Auk colony. Pretty unconcerned about our presence (birds were sat on the rocks next to us), their main concern was the occasional passing Glaucous Gull. On an island with no raptors, these brutes are the top aerial predator and more than capable of catching a Little Auk in flight (I watched them do it!). With every pass of the gull, the whole colony would take off, whirring around together across the slope: interestingly, every time they did it, they flew in the same direction, following a clockwise loop over the sea...

Fugelsongen, the island where this accessible colony is located, means 'bird song', named after the cute burblings of the birds in the burrows.

Spitsbergen, June/July 2011: Arctic wild flowers

The flora of Spitsbergen is predictably restricted, with around 165 vascular plant species: a very 'do-able' flora, especially with the help of this website.

The islands' "forests" are made up of tiny, creeping Polar Willow and Dwarf Birch, and pretty much all the flowers are equally diminutive, clump-forming or creeping 'alpines'. But get down to their level, and there's some pretty cool plants to be found!

Svalbard Poppy, Papaver dahlianum (which, despite its name, isn't endemic but also found in eastern Greenland and far northern Norway). One of the more showy flowers, a common roadside plant in and around Longyearbyen but not so obvious elsewhere.

Mountain Avens, Dryas octopetala

Pygmy Buttercup, Ranunculus pygmaeus

Purple Saxifrage, Saxifraga oppositifolia. Together with the lovely Moss Campion, these patches of purple were the most obvious bright colours on the tundra

Hairy Lousewort, Pedicularis hirsuta

Cassiope tetragona. Apparently the English name is White Arctic Bell-heather... Cassiope sounds much nicer.

A lovely yellow form of Tufted Saxifrage, Saxifraga caespitosa. Or is this Saxifraga aurea...?

Ignoring the grasses & sedges (as, I'm afraid, I did), there are only really four big-ish groups of difficult plants to worry about in Spitsbergen: buttercups and saxifrages (which aren't so hard really), the white Caryophyllaceae (which I'm afraid went the way of the grasses & sedges!) and the whitlow grasses, Draba spp. These basically end up being 'one of the yellow whitlow-grasses' or 'one of the white whitlow-grasses'... no prizes for working out this one! (which, if pushed, I'd call Draba alpina, the appropriately-named Golden Whitlow-grass).

I obviously still have a fair bit to get to grips with, with the Spitsbergen flora... maybe next year!

Spitsbergen, June/July 2011

So I'm just back from a spectacular 10 day trip to the Arctic... Spitsbergen to be precise (or Svalbard, if you prefer the Norwegian name for the archipelago).

My face is still acheing from grinning inanely for 10 days straight: from sitting in the middle of a Little Auk colony to watching an exciting Polar Bear family interaction, via kayaking amongst the icebergs and some lovely high arctic wild flowers...

I'll be uploading some of the photos soon, but for now here's just a taster of what Spitsbergen has to offer... see you there in 2012!