March 27th 2012

I got a request after my last blog-post ofputting on some bird photos again, and here they are! These are far from my best photos ever, and it might not be the most spectacular species. But it is a species I like very much, and I have met this specific bird before! I am trying to see how the Glaucous Gulls (Polarmåke) react to being fed with bread up here, with the catching of gulls later in teh season in mind. And when a gull flew past me I threw out some pieces of bread, and within minutes I had three adult Glaucous Gulls feeding in front of me. The bird I catured with my camera is one of teh birds I ringed last year! It is now called JX017, and is the female from the pair that chased all other gulls away from my trap last year. It si the first gull-ring that has been read on Svalbard this year, but there will be many more when the birds just finally turn up in numbers.

JX017 landing for a meal of bread!

More fur than feathers!

As the winter now have turned bright and sunny once again, I wont let an opportunity to explore the wilderness go away. Many perople pay lots of money to see what I have got just outside my front door, and during the weekend I have once again gotten the feeling that I must have saved many millions in just living here, instead of needing to travel up here just to see it!

But no matter how wonderful the landscape is now when the sun has come over the mountains, I am still missing the birds. And todays little trip in the car managed to produce three adult Glaucous Gulls (Polarmåke). All of which were distant views. But somewhat more cooperative were the Svalbard Reindeer (Svalbard reinsdyr). These are very dosile and nice animals, and unfortunately some of them were infected by rabies last year. These three individuals on the other hand seemed to be fine, and they were just relaxing in the sun when I came driving by. I walked out of the car just tenmetres away from tehm, and they figured that I was not worth more than just lifting their heads before they went back to sleep. It is the real Svalbard-spirit: " Dont rush it, everything will happen when it is time for it to happen!" I just love these animals!

They are coming back!

Finally, over the last week, I have started to see some Glaucous Gulls (Polarmåke) again. The largest group was of ten birds, but now they can just bring in theire friends so that I can look for more rare gulls in between them. A nice surprise was that I found an adult Iceland Gull (Grønlandsmåke) flying together with a Glaucous. So now Im hoping that the invasion of IG to Western Europe can bring some of these gulls up here. And who knows, maybe there can be a Kumlien's or Thayer's Gull in amongst the birds coming up here?

1st of March

Finally I am back blogging, and my cameras are out of hibernation! Due to some problems with the D300S I had to use the backup-camera, my D200, for these pictures. But hopefully the new camera is working properly again soon.

The sun has finally come above the horizon here at 78 degrees north, and the motives are way too many to decide on one single motive. But I will try to upload new photos here as often as possible, and show you out there what a truly beautiful place I live at. Also in this blog I have put in a photo of two out of the four Svalbard Ptarmigans I came across in the middle of town. To me, they beat gulls, pigeons and blackbirds as in-town-birds any day!