The mountains report part II - Long-tailed Skuas

 A real highlight of the weekend was a very close encounter with a couple of Long-tailed Skuas. We saw them in the same place on both Friday and Saturday and they were hanging out on a few areas of snow free ground on the northern side of Valdresflya.

We were lucky to discover them on the Friday. We had stopped the car to scan for birds and I decided to walk over the snow to see what was behind a slightly higher point just 20m from the road. I was unsure whether I would just sink into the snow but it held my weight and when I got to the higher point I could see a whole new area and there just another 20m away was a Long-tailed Skua sitting on a rock! My sudden presence caused it to fly but it quickly landed again next to another bird! They were very settled and didn’t do too much until they suddenly both started calling and then flew off as though they were going to intercept a threat. We never saw what it was that had spooked them (but I’ll bet it was a Gyr Falcon…) and they quickly returned to their favoured rocks.

Long-tailed Skuas are seen annually in varying numbers at Valdresflye but they often seem to just pop in to check out the conditions and it is rare that they stay the whole summer but with there being so many lemmings this year hopefully they will stay around and attempt to breed. They are for me the ultimate species to see when visiting the area (although Gyr Falcon would trump them should I ever see one there) and I always think it is amazing how they just appear there. This year for example there has not been a single record of Long-tailed Skua from southern Norway (including at sea) so how do they get to these inland mountains?

Long-tailed Skua (fjelljo)

just look at that tail and shadow

both birds

should be named Very Long Tailed Skua

my flight shots may not be as good as Conor's (a man is allowed to blame his equipment sometimes) but they weren't too bad either