May 27th

Yet another day in the world of ducks and geese, with a couple of additional nice birds. Ill start off todays blog with some pictures of the Canada Goose (Kanadagås) which spent most of the day feeding next to the dogyard next to town. This is probably one of the pair that we found a few days ago. There has been quite a bit of conversations about the which subspecies these birds belong to. There were two ssp that were looked upon as most possible, interior and parvipes. Due to the long neck, and a size similar or larger to Pink-footed Goose (Kortnebbgås), parvipes was soon removed from the short-list, and we now think this might be interior. I would be very happy if anyone with knowledge would comment on which ssp this one might belong to. I tried to get pictures where its possible to compare the size with Barnacle Goose (Hvitkinngås) and Pink-footed Goose.

One of the less frequent visitors among the breeding birds of Svalbard is the Brent Goose (Ringgås). Today there were two pairs at the lagoon at Hotellneset. These nice, small geese are allways nice to see. I even got to see some action, the male of one of the pairs chased off the other male when he came a bit to close to his female. Then the first pair followed up with some courting behaviour.

We are not quite sure where this Greylag Goose (Grågås) comes from. The first Greylag that came up this year was a lone bird, then there was a pair of Greylags that stayed at Hotellneset and at the airport. This lone bird might be one of these, or it might be a new bird. Anyway it is a nice sight in among all the Pink-foots and Barnacles.

Also in the same place as the Canada and the Greylag Goose the two Mallard (Stokkand) males were feeding along. Allways nice to see uncommon birds in the sunshine.

Other than these birds, the only birds that I can recall that are worth mentioning are a female Red-necked Phalarope (Svømmesnipe) and an adult Iceland Gull (Grønlandsmåke).