A number of factors persuaded me to take a long weekend in Iceland back in July. There was the prospect of renewing my acquaintance both with Edward and with the primal scenery of his country of residence. Then there was the possibility of seeing some great birds and a few interesting new mammals. But I think what really swung it for me was the news that Edward had just got hold of a copy of the 6CD set of the Fall’s John Peel sessions.
First stop on the birding itinerary was an evening stroll around Edward’s local patch, a small inlet on the outskirts of Reykjavik. A small wader has me scratching my head for a while until Edward pointed out that it was a Purple Sandpiper. Despite long familiarity with the species from my former local patch in Scotland I had never previously seen one in summer plumage. That’s one of the great things about birding, particularly somewhere unfamiliar, the chance to learn something every time you go out. Other relative novelties were Arctic Skua, Long-tailed Duck and the first of many Glaucous Gulls.
Next morning was an early start and we picked-up Edward’s friend Simmi before heading north. For the most part the road follows the coast, sweeping past long mountain ridges and rocky inlets. Villages are few and far between and often look rather precarious, being dwarfed by the neighbouring hills that offer them some shelter from the elements. Birds, particularly waders, are also part of the scenery, and being used to seeing waders only on passage, it takes a while for me to readjust to seeing Snipe and Whimbrel routinely perching on fence posts. Arctic Terns are also omnipresent, and after my initial excitement I soon learn that any medium-sized passerine glimpsed from the car is invariably a Redwing! We pick up Short-Eared Owl and Merlin from the car, and short stops produce nice views of a White-tailed Eagle with a well-grown chick on an offshore skerry, and a single Iceland Gull wondering why it is so lonely in the country that gave it its name. A diversion to a small lake a little way of the main road produces nice views of breeding Red-throated Divers, and a little further along the road a group of greyish birds hurrying across the road in front of us have me scratching my head again until the penny drops that they are Ptarmigan chicks. They don’t normally cross roads in Scotland!
This trip was a first chance to play with Edward’s new toy, namely a shiny new in-car CD player. I think it must have been quite expensive as it came with a car installed around it. The idea of drive-time music conjures up images of driving an open-top sports car down sun-kissed California freeways with the wind in your hair and the Eagles at full blast. Well that doesn’t quite work in Iceland. It is one of the few countries I have been to where having a car with four-wheel drive is more a matter of necessity than of vanity, and the weather means that by and large it is wiser to leave your hair unruffled while driving. Perhaps more than that, the Eagles just wouldn’t work in Iceland. The raw scenery, and in some cases also the similarly unfinished roads, call for something altogether less antiseptic and polished. And so it was that we found ourselves negotiating steep sided gravel roads out towards Iceland’s westernmost point with the Fall’s Peel Sessions CDs at full blast. Now I remembered a lot of this stuff from hearing it first time around on the John Peel show back in the 1980s, but it was remarkable both how well the music has stood the test of time, and how well it works as Icelandic drive-time music!
Thanks to Edward’s earlier thread, more attentive readers will already know that Iceland’s westernmost point is marked by the extensive cliffs and seabird colonies of Látrabjarg. For anyone who hasn’t read that thread, well you really should, not least because it will save me having to describe the place again and repeat all the necessary superlatives! Suffice to say that I can only concur with the air of awestruck inarticulacy conveyed by Edward in his account (see http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=37358).
To add a few observations of my own on Látrabjarg, the concentrations of birds there really are extraordinary. Looking along the cliffs and away into the distance the air is just full of swarms and swarms of birds. I sometimes had the impression that falling off the cliffs here might actually be survivable despite the height of the cliffs, as your fall would surely be cushioned by a fair number of unfortunate seabirds by the time you reached the foot of the cliffs. Suffice to say however, I did not put this to the test. The other striking feature is just how approachable some of the seabirds were. It is the only seabird colony I have been to where the Puffins seem to notice when you have a camera to the extent that some even turn and walk towards you. Some of the Razorbills were similarly approachable, and even the local Brünnich's Guillemot seemed happy to pose for photos, though their habit of nesting further down the sheer cliffs makes them less photogenic than their cliff-top nesting neighbours.
Retreating from the edge of Europe, but still sound-tracked by the Fall, we stop briefly in civilisation for a surprisingly good pizza, before moving on and finding somewhere to stop for the night. A quick evening check along the fjord turns up the only Harlequin Duck of our trip, but not the hoped-for White-winged Scoter. Next morning we return to the quest with a more diligent check of all the Eider flocks along the fjord. One stop produces a nice bonus in the form of a drake King Eider, a sub-rarity here, but it is the next stop which produces the goods when Simmi picks-up the long-staying White-winged Scoter out in the fjord. This is the American version of Velvet Scoter and has recently been split so that it is now regarded as a separate species. And quite right too may I add; it was a much more distinctive bird than I was expecting so I’m not about to disagree with the split. For Edward there was the added bonus that this was his 200th Icelandic bird. There are photos of this bird on the Birding Iceland website at http://www.hi.is/~yannk/myndir/rari...eg_240405_1.jpg and http://www.hi.is/~yannk/myndir/rari...eg_240405_2.jpg.
These show well the distinguishing features of this species compared to Velvet Scoter, particularly the brownish flanks, the white eye marking and the different structure and colour of the bill.
Moving away from the coast, Iceland’s never abundant vegetation became even sparser as we climbed, leaving the scenery as just pure, hardcore geology. I think it was somewhere around here that I turned to Edward and said “Remind me, what planet are we on again?” Still, the birds don’t seem to mind, with Golden Plovers seeming particularly at home in these hills. Another, more elusive species also makes its home in this landscape, and a stop high on the road over the plateau soon produces a rather distant white dot. It confirms our suspicions that it is a Snowy Owl by obligingly flying a short distance towards us. However, views are rather distant and the Scottish-style horizontal drizzle doesn’t make for good viewing conditions so we don’t linger. A little further along the road we find another white dot rather closer to us and in a position where we can watch it from the car without too much discomfort. This bird, which we conclude is probably an adult female, also flies closer before starting to walk around on the ground. It was presumably hunting for food, much to the distress of the local Snow Buntings. Despite the stark scenery and grey weather this was clearly a bird which was very much at home in this environment and it felt like a real privilege to be able to watch it in this setting.
A Snowy Owl would be a difficult bird to top almost anywhere, but there is one species in Iceland which could give it a run for its money. And that bird did appear on our route back to Reykjavik. Unfortunately our views of Gyrfalcon were rather brief, and despite giving the impression that it was about to land, we were unable to locate it after our initial flight views. After a brief scare when it seemed that a petrol station was going to be as elusive as that Gyr, the journey back was pleasantly uneventful.
The next day, Edward was back at work, but I had made plans to continue a personal quest. Whale-watching trips off Iceland at this time of year offer a reasonable chance of seeing the world’s largest mammal, and having missed Blue Whale on a trip off Western Australia last year, I was keen to have another go. The bus journey up to the fishing port of Ólafsvik offered me another chance to be awe-struck by Iceland’s scenery. It is the way that the geological processes are just laid bare in front of you that really struck me. This came home to me when I realised that the arrangement of rock next to the road at one point could only be the result of a relatively recent lava flow!
If the scenery of Iceland is typically rugged and rocky, on the day of my trip this was also true of the sea. It made for a bit of a white-knuckle ride out to the deeper waters used as feeding grounds by the whales, but the conditions also meant that it would be very difficult to spot any whales which were in the area. However, with my breakfast apparently happy to stay put for once, I was able to enjoy the abundance of birds in the area, with Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Arctic Terns, Puffins and Guillemots always present, along with a few Glaucous Gulls and the occasional Arctic Skua. I was under strict orders from Edward not to see Pomarine Skua, so I was careful to make sure that I didn’t. After a few hours at sea without any cetacean sightings, we turned back to port. On the way back a few White-beaked Dolphins took pity on us and rode the boat’s bow wave for a while, so at least we didn’t draw a complete blank. Blue Whale will have to wait for another day, but at the moment it remains my biggest bogey species.
Back in Reykjavik, Edward took me on a short drive to the outskirts of the city where the main attraction was breeding Great Northern Divers. As with Black-throated Divers, this is a species you really have to see in breeding plumage to appreciate them properly. In the calm weather and evening sunshine, these birds looked superb and almost hand-painted in their plumage detail. Another nearby lake produces Slavonian Grebe and Red-necked Phalarope as my last Icelandic ticks of this trip.
With a few hours to kill before my afternoon flight, I spent the next morning in Reykjavik trying to photograph Arctic Terns, and just generally being a tourist. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and I was left to wonder if there are any other capital cities where you can find Arctic Terns feeding in the city centre, or where you can look out over the open sea towards distant glacier-capped mountains. With weather and views like that it was a real wrench to have to leave Iceland. Still, whenever I hear the Fall now it has the added bonus of evoking memories of some of Iceland’s less than super highways.
Utmost thanks to Edward for his hospitality, driving skills, taste in music and all round affability. Not exactly Proust but I hope it was worth the wait.
Stuart
Photos :
1, Látrabjarg
2 & 3, Two of the Icelandic tourist board's smallest employees
4, Europes westernmost village
5, Arctic Tern in Reykjavik city centre.
Nice, nice, nice!
Very nicely written. Sounds like you had a great trip and thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading your report left me itching to book a trip myself next year!