A trip to Tromsø

We are still in the north enjoying temperatures that are if anything too hot with 30C reached once so far and forecast again later this week. We have also driven to Tromsø which is a full days drive and spent a couple of days sorting out Jr’s apartment which will be her new home as she will be starting university there soon - exciting and scary times!

Birding wise, and including the trip to Tromsø, it appears to be raptor free here with the odd sighting of White-tailed Eagle being it. This points to a bottom year for rodents but one slightly strange thing is that I have come across a fair few broods of Willow Grouse and then often with 8 young. Usually when there are no rodents then ground nesting birds suffer as predators go after them. Trips to Fauske/Klungsett have revealed that the lack of birds is real. Velvet Scoters are almost absent presumably due to a lack of food having caused the moulting flocks to move elsewhere. A pair of Garganey and a few waders have been the only goodies.

The drive up to Tromsø gave me another new butterfly in the form of Chequered Skipper (gulflekksmyger). The species is not that scarce in southern Norway although is absent from the Oslo area but where I saw it is part of an isolated population in the north. Future trips to Tromsø will give me the chance to look for more northern specialities including Dingy Skipper (dvergperlemorvinge).

Bar-tailed Godwits (lappspove) at Klungsett, Fauske

Male Garganey (knekkand) in eclipse

A pair of Arctic Skuas (tyvjo)

A male Willow Grouse (lirype) giving a broke wing distraction display to try to draw me away from its young that I had stumbled upon

And a female

Prestvannet in Tromsø is an incredible urban birding spot with a number of pairs of Red-throated Divers (smålom).

My first ever Chequered Skipper (gulflekksmyger)

Just south of Narvik is Norway’s «national mountain» Stetind