Category Archives: Birds
Five Crossbill chicks
Today a male Crossbill appeared in the garden with as much as five chicks. The chicks let the father feed them sunflower seeds which they seemed to like a lot. The chicks are probably approximately a month old and possibly about 1 -2 weeks since they left they nest. Crossbills have not been seen here in the garden since the first week of April.
At the same time last year a female Crossbill appeared here with two chicks.
Yesterday we saw several Crossbills with six chicks in Grímsnes, South Iceland.
The first Redpoll chicks
We saw the first Redpoll chicks in the garden yesterday. Two chicks were looking for food in the feed leftovers from this winter. We usually see the first chicks at the same time every year.
Redpolls breed more than once every summer and the eggs are most often 4 -6 in each breeding although more than four chicks are very seldom seen.
Marsh Marigold in bloom
Despite the cold weather and late spring plants are in bloom. The Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris) is a plant you can not but notice with its beautiful bright yellow flowers. Its habitat is mostly in marshlands, on banks of ditches and cold springs.
The Pintail
The Pintail (Anas acuta) is a common duck and has a wide distribution all over the Northern hemisphere. In Iceland there are only around 500 breeding pairs, scattered all over the country including the interior.
The Pintail is a dabbling duck like the Mallard, only dipping its head in the water to find food, not the whole body.
The Knot
The Knot (Calidris canutus) is a visitor here on the way to its breeding grounds in Greenland and Northeast Canada. In the spring around 270,000 birds stop here and in the autumn their numbers are much higher. For them Iceland is the place to relax and feed on the long flight from their winter grounds in Western Europe. The photos are taken near Eyrarbakki, South Iceland.
Sanderling
The Sanderling (Calidris alba) is a small wader, quick in movements, and only a guest in Iceland in the spring. It has a stopover here in May on its way to Northeast Greenland where it breeds. Its winter grounds are in West Europe all the way south to Namibia in West Africa.
It is estimated that around 25,000 birds stopover here, mainly on the Southwest coast. The photos are taken near Eyrarbakki, South Iceland.
Annual American visitor
Today I saw a Ring-necked Duck on a pond by Þingvallavatn Lake. This was an adult male in a group of Tufted Ducks. Ring-necked Ducks are annual vagrants in Iceland and usually the visitors are males. Sometimes they mate with Tufted Duck females and once in a while you see hybrids of these species.
Ring-necked Ducks are North American and there they are common on woodland ponds.
Busy Wagtail
The White Wagtail pair is building a nest in a big spruce tree in the garden, the same tree as in recent years. This is the female collecting horse hair that will in all probability serve as a lining inside the nest.
The first chicks
The first chicks this spring have hatched and jumped out of the nest. This morning we saw a Blackbird chick with a very short tail, it was hopping around and trying its wings. We hope that it will not fall prey for the cats that regularly visit the garden.
This is one of the male Blackbirds that was here this winter and perhaps the father of the chick we saw this morning.