Category Archives: Garden

Birds, Garden

Snow Buntings arrive

The Snow Buntings arrived in town today. They prefer the open fields in the highlands but when it gets colder and the snow covers everything, they come in huge flocks.

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Snow Buntings

They change colours with the seasons. In the summer the males are white and black but in winter they are browner and darker. Beautiful birds but because there are so many of them people tend to take little notice of them.

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Snow Bunting – male in summerform (July)

In Iceland the Snow Bunting is called Snjótittlingur similar in meaning to Snow Bunting but in the summer it is called Sólskríkja which means the bird that sqeaks in the sun, Sun Bunting. The song of the male is very vocal and high and the Sun Bunting is the symbol of the highlands.

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Birds, Garden

The Fieldfare has arrived

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Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) -photo from 2011

After a stormy night with some very heavy winds (20-30 m/s), snow and 0°C, this winter’s first Fieldfare has arrived in the garden. Every autumn groups of Fieldfares come from Scandinavia and overwinter in Iceland. They are annual visitors in the garden. Once in a while they breed in Iceland, mainly in the northern part of the country. Only one known breeding has been reported in Selfoss (1980).

Other birds in the garden this morning:
Blackbird 6
Redwing 6
Starling 22
Blackcap 3
European Robin 1
Chaffinches 4
Redpolls 70
Common Crossbills 6

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Birds, Garden

The Redwing

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Redwing (Turdus iliacus) eating Rowan berries in December 2013

The Redwing is one of the most common birds in Icelandic forests and probably the most popular bird in Iceland, – everyone knows the Redwing. Most of them go to UK in the wintertime but many overwinter in Iceland. The Icelandic Redwings are bigger than the European ones and you can also recognize them by their underwings which are redder. There are always some of them in the garden every winter.

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Redwing /Turdus iliacus)

Now we have four of them but a lot of them are still in the forests. Their numbers will increase if we get some real winter weather and the forecast predicts colder weather in the coming days.

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Birds, Garden

Fighting for food

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Now it is the time of year when we can start looking forward to seeing the Waxwing. They sometimes come in huge flocks from Scandinavia or even all the way east from Siberia. This autumn a few have been spotted in the northern part of the country and the east.

We have apples for them in the garden and as you can see from the photoes they quite like them.  –Now we just have to wait patiently and see if they will pay us a visit.

The photoes are taken in January 2011 and do not need explaining. During this time there were groups of  Waxwings in Selfoss and we had 6 -10 in our garden most days and sometimes the birds fought for the apples.

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Birds, Garden

European Robin

In the last few days we have seen one or two Robins (Erithacus rubecula) in the garden. In the “spring” weather today one was singing  by our front door. I say spring weather because the temperature has been around 10° C which is most uncommon for this part of the year.

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There are a lot of Robins in Iceland now, mainly in the East and Southeast. They are vagrants and probably annual visitors but it is a long time since so many have been seen.  Long time no see – it has been 20 years since we last saw one in our garden so we are very excited.

The Robin is a common garden bird in Britian but in Scandinavia they are shy woodland birds. The Robins that are visiting Iceland now are probably originated from Scandinavia.

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Birds, Garden

Blackcaps claiming territory

There are a lot of Blackcaps in Iceland now. In the last couple of days we have had 4 -5 of both genders staying in the garden. They claim territories and therefore there has been a battle between them. It seems that one of them has taken ownership in the garden south of the house and another north of the house.

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The Blackcaps like apples and pears a lot and are in constant competition with Thrushes and Starlings for these delicacies .

Blackcaps are vagrants in Iceland and have in a few instances managed to survive through the winter here in the garden. They have the most chance of surviving when the winters are mild. We’ll see what happens this winter.

This photo was taken yesterday, November 16, of a male Blackcap.

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