Beautiful Northern Lights over Selfoss / Iceland this evening.
The Fieldfare has arrived
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
The Redwing
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.
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.
Seeking shelter
When the weather gets colder small birds come in flocks to seek shelter in the the garden. In the last few days there have been more than one hundred Redpolls here.
There are at least seventy in the picture from yesterday, –eating sunflower seeds.
The Crossbills are back
After four weeks the Crossbills are back. The weather is colder and it snowed yesterday. –Wonderful to have these colourful birds back. We also have more Redpolls, they have now multiplied in numbers and there are probably around one hundred in the trees and on the ground outside our living room window.
What bird is this?
Redpoll
Attractive branch of the Rowan
One branch of a big Rowan tree here in the garden seems to be very attractive to small birds.
A Robin and a Blackcap perched on the same spot of the branch in the lovely weather we had yesterday. The Robin sang his heart out although it is almost December.
Fighting for food
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.
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.
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.