Winter birds

24.08.2002

Ó Robert Burton

I have just returned from a month in northern Greenland. I have been there many times and I hope to return many more times. The sun does not set during the short summer; and the alpine scenery of jagged peaks and glaciers is magnificent and contrasts with an unexpectedly colourful selection of flowers on the surrounding tundra. But one pleasure for me is to see our winter birds in their summer breeding grounds.

Waders, such as knots, turnstones and sanderlings, that flock in our estuaries spend the summer widely spaced on Arctic tundras. When I visit in late July and August, breeding is nearly complete and small flocks are forming in preparation for the migration south. There will also be flocks of barnacle and pink-footed geese on the lakes and along the shore, probably still with young in family parties and the adults will be coming out of the flightless condition caused by the simultaneous moult of the flight feathers. Among small birds, the snow buntings are also in flocks whose movements have been described as looking like flurries of snowflakes. Redpolls are occasionally seen, although they are more easily located by their call notes, and this year we often had wheatears feeding around our hut. They sometimes landed at my feet (although not when my camera was ready, as you can see from the picture above).

Many visitors to the Greenland tundras are surprised that any animal can make a living from the sparse vegetation, but the summer months are bountiful enough for birds and mammals to rear their young and prepare for the long winter. The migrant birds need to lay down fat for their migratory flights, which take them across the Atlantic, perhaps with a stopover in Iceland, and, for wheatears, down to tropical Africa. Seeds and berries are an important source of energy-rich food and purple droppings showed that the geese were feeding on a bumper crop of bilberries. And so were we – they livened up the breakfast porage very nicely.