Iceland in Autumn: What's that Bird/Blur?

Despite the inclement weather there were some opportunities to do a little bird watching and practise my identification skills. There are a lot fewer species of bird in Iceland than in the UK and the vast majority are migratory owing to the cold and dark winter months. For example there's just one corvid species; in the UK we have eight.

Now identifying can be easy when working from fantastically clear photographic shots of birds from good angles showing birds in handsome breeding plumage. And where you have all the time in the world to look at it. Bird-watching out in the field, for a novice like me, can be something quite different. The birds stand off far in the distance, sometimes being antisocial with their backs turned to me or tucked-up half asleep, or moving quickly by. I have no telescope or huge-lensed camera so squinting at birds, trying to remember what I need to look for when they're constantly moving, and identifying them I find much trickier outdoors.

As such I've got a little bird-ID quiz for you and I've included photos that were pure snapshots to ID birds based on features as they flew by. Good enough to ID them, but not great photographs. If you've read some of my Iceland trip posts then there may be a few clues in there to some of the birds. And if you don't know much about identifying I'll include the identifying features in the answers at the end of the quiz. So don't scroll down too low and cheat!

So grab a pen, there are 15 birds to identify! Most of them are coastal, some are rather scarce vistors to the UK. There is one bird we don't get in the UK which is number 8.


What's that Bird/Blur?

All done, how'd you find it? Before we get to the answers, and so you don't accidentally see them too early, there is one last part of the trip to mention.

One of the last sites we visited in Iceland was the last known colony of the Great auk. This was a largest of the auk species which fill the same evolutionary niche that penguins do in this hemisphere, and the Great auk itself was flightless. The species was hunted to extinction when the last pair were killed in 1844. Ironically, and terribly, their rarity made them more vulnerable to extinction by becoming the target of rare collectors. The colony itself was actually off the coast of where we were on the small island  of Eldey just visible to us through the mist. A bronze statue on the mainland stands in memorandum to its demise, and its culprit, us.

Bird Quiz Answers

1 - Gannet (large white bird, pointed wings, black tips)

2 - Fulmar (not a gull but a member of the Procellariidae family who have a tubular part on their bills to dispel salt water. Has grey wingtips - gulls have black or white, and flies stiffly and impressively around steep cliffs and rolling waves)

3 - Great black-backed gull (large gull. Black back with pink legs. Lesser black-backed have yellow legs)

4 - Glaucous gull (one of three main gull species that have white wingtips. One of the others is the all-white ivory gull. Looks like the Iceland gull but has a fierce-looking face with sloping forehead and is a bigger gull)

5 - Sooty shearwater (An all black bird at sea that 'shears' the air across the waves with long wings)

6 - Razorbill (in winter plumage, can be identified from the other black-and-white guillemots by the white on the head extending upwards behind the eye and a lack of side-streaks on the white flanks, chunky bill)

7 - Black guillemot (winter plumage, retains a distinct white patch on its wing, also has red feet)

8 - Harlequin duck (female duck is dark brown in winter but has a diagnostic white spot on the cheek behind the eye)

9 - Eider duck (this male is in eclipse plumage as it is so dark but retains white marking, eiders have distinctively shaped 'triangular' bills that appear goose-like)

10 - Merlin (Iceland has only two birds of prey: the Merlin and the Gyrfalcon, this male merlin can be identified by its small size and rufous chest and slate colouring to the head and wings)

11 - Great skua (a predatory seabird, great skuas are heavy-looking birds with distinctive white 'fingers' to their wingtips on the underside on an otherwise dark brown bird)

12 - Raven (Iceland's only corvid, has a heavy bill, metalic sheen and a paddle-shaped tail in flight)

13 - Whooper swan (Iceland's only swan. Has a yellow and black bill with the yellow in a triangle-shape)

14 - Snow bunting (winter plumage, has a stubby yellow bill and white wing panels on a brown body)

15 - Redwing (a thrush with rusty red patches under its wing, in the UK it can be distinguished from our thrushes by its obvious supercilium (think 'eyebrow') and moustachial stripe (coming down from the beak)

If you're looking to learn how to identify birds. I recommend the Collin's Bird Guide. This is a guide to species in the UK as well as the rest of Europe and includes pictures in various plummage variations, diagnostic features, descriptions, and where and when they are. The book is commonly seen as one of the best for identification and helps you learn more about the natural world around you.

There are also some quizzes online to practise your ID skills. The one I would recommend is called birdid.no. This a Norwegian site that also offers some ID on mammals and field signs as well as birds. This quiz allows you to pick your own country and level which makes things easier to learn.

Another option is 'Cbirding' a german website which is for all European birds. Personally I find this can make it quite hard and confusing on the higher difficulties if you are not familiar with a lot of European species.

Well that's it for Iceland now, it was a good trip but the sun has finally set on our time there. Next week - art!

The sun sets on the mountains and glacial waters of Iceland

Iceland in Autumn: ..& Ice

Iceland in Autumn

..& Ice

Alongside the volcanoes and tectonic plates that form the base of the country it is the ice of the glaciers that carve out the landscape of Iceland. Great ice caps on the mountain ranges slide down the slopes as glaciers and stream out craggy rocks as waterfalls as they make their way towards the ocean.

Our second hotel along our trip sat at the base of the great Vatnajökull, Europe’s greatest icecap, which sat like a great dome upon a seat of mountains and volcanoes. Great outlet glaciers poured down the mountainsides like great torrents of water frozen in motion. Clouds seemed to pour out of the glaciers too like breathe condensing on a cold day. Braided channels of meltwater flowed out into the black sands towards the coast. These channels are what had made road-building difficult here for so long. A main road was finally built around Iceland in 1974 after these channels were merged and bridged although great contorted heaps of iron sit alongside the current bridges, a reminder of a volcanic eruption and subsequent flooding in 1996 that saw the original bridges pulverised by water and colossal icebergs the size of houses.

Svínafellsjökul

From our hotel we walked towards the outlet glacier Svínafellsjökull on a small winding path. The ground was black and littered with gravel and great chunks of ice near us were sooty from the volcanic ground and dripped into icy pools. We walked right onto the foot of the glacier but no further as we were without a guide, crampons and ice shoes. Great crevasses cracked the glacier making it dangerous to proceed unless you knew where you were going. The glacier was a mass of small peaks and pools reflecting the mountain above. Slabs of ice were banded with debris and in places the ice was blue from the sheer volume of ice that squeezed out any air.

My mum and I at the foot of the glacier

 

We headed to Jökulsárlón, the iceberg lagoon, where icebergs are calved off from Vatnajökull before then drifting out in to the Atlantic Ocean. The lagoon is around 80 metres deep on average and up to 100 metres in places and is growing in size as Vatnajökull retreats. The ice that floats by is around 1000 years old in a mix of fresh melt-water and salt water from the Atlantic. The salt water means the lagoon is largely kept ice-free as salt water needs a lower temperature of around -5 to freeze than fresh water. This was exploited in order to film a car chase in the Bond film Die Another Day where the channel leading to the Atlantic Ocean was plugged. This prevented the salt water entering the lagoon allowing Jökulsárlón to freeze in a couple of weeks.

There's some footage you can see on Youtube of the car chase.

Jökulsárlón was impressive and beautiful. Icebergs of all shapes drifted by. Some were white, rugged and snow-like. Others were blue, having recently flipped over to show the compressed ice that hadn’t been exposed to the air. Others were clear and glassy or striped black with volanic dust making them resemble humbugs. 

Gulls and fulmars sat on the ice, unaffected by the cold and common seals swam slowly along. A lone harlequin duck drifted behind an iceberg as a great skua skimmed through the air. On the rocky channel that escorts the water and icebergs out of the lagoon purple sandpipers and turnstone poked around the rocks.

We took an amphibious craft out onto the lagoon to tour the icebergs. One of the boat staff brought up a slab of ice, clear and faceted like diamond and chiselled off pieces for us to eat.

Glacial ice.. great in drinks!

After our boat tour we followed the icebergs out to sea to the black sand beaches. Here some icebergs had stranded and small fragments sat on the shore glinting like glass. Close up you could see they had been carved into fantastic shapes by the waves and would look at home in an art gallery.

To me, Jökulsárlón was the highlight of our trip and so it marks the end of my Iceland posts about the landscape here. I still have a little bird quiz to come if someone wants to practise their bird ID skills (we get most of the species I saw in the UK too so it's useful for British Birding) as well as the tale of the Great auk.

I'll end with my two favourite photos of the ice here. I hope they demonstrate how amazing this place is.

Iceland in Autumn: Land of Fire...

Part 3

Land of Fire...

Iceland is also known as the land of fire and ice due to its glaciers and tectonic activity (nothing to do with A Song of Ice and Fire btw). Iceland itself is growing in landmass as it sits straddling the mid-Atlantic ridge where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are moving away from one another. There are also hotspots here, weak areas in the earth’s crust which are thinner than normal. These allow heating and venting of water and mud and contribute to renewable power which makes up 85% of energy usage in Iceland and almost all of its electricity. These abundant renewable sources make electricity and heating very affordable in comparison to here in the UK.

We visited some of these geothermal areas. First off, we visited Geysir to see the geysers. Pools and streams steamed into the cool air and the ground was mottled and stained with minerals. Litli Geysir bubbled away like a small jacuzzi and we watched and waited for Strokkur to erupt into the air, as this occurs roughly every 5-10 minutes. You can see the water pool bubbling and a great dome inflates on the surface just before hot water shoots 20 metres up into the air.

Strokkur errupting

The Great Geysir itself was a pool steaming nearby, this had reached heights of 70 metres in the past making it the second largest active geyser in the world after Steamboat at Yellowstone, USA, though it erupts rarely now. 

We also paid a visit to Gunnuhveh. Named after the ghost of a woman this was an expanse of mottled clays steaming and bubbling with fumaroles and mud pools that looked something like I imagine the surface of Venus to resemble. The air smelt of sulphur and signs warned us of the acidity of the water and the temperatures of the ground which could reach 80-100°C. As such we walked along the boardwalks to visit a large steam vent billowing into the crisp cold air. This had become more active since 2007 when it destroyed a section of boardwalk causing the area to be partially closed until 2010.

Gunnuhveh

The destroyed boardwalk

Along the roadside we passed the vast Laki lavafields. A vast swathe of bloated rocks peagreen with moss that stretched on for miles. These are the remains and subsequent primary succession  of nature from the eruption of the volcano Grímsvötn which caused fissures to open up in the ground. This occurred between 1783 and 1784 lasting for 8 months.

The eruption led to a fall in global temperatures and led to crop failure across Europe and effecting the monsoon cycle leading to drought and famine in parts of Africa and India and the middle East. It is estimated to have led to the deaths of around 6 million people, making it the deadliest eruption in historical times.

Such is the power of what is right under our feet. 
Next week: The Ice part of 'Ice'land: From glacier to ocean, and probably the most beautiful sights here.

Website Announcement!

Hello,

after what has been quite a long time coming my website is now finally up and online, hooray! Please make sure to check it out at www.katiezartist.co.uk. There you will find a range of my artwork both oil paintings and sketches of wildlife and pets as well as some information about me. 

I am now open to commissions for those living in the UK. So if you or someone you know would like to get a piece of artwork made of a pet, let me know! My wildlife art is also available to purchase locally for those in the Kent area. 

Either way I hope you check it out and enjoy what you see. Feel free to ask questions if you have any, give feedback, and so on. It will be regularly updated with new artwork so check back ever-so-often to see what's new.

My website is finally online!

If you live in Kent you might want to check out the Art Postcard Exhibition that is running from the 18th of October through to November 1st. This an event being run during the Canterbury Festival that is being run to raise funds for Save the Children as part of the No Child Born to Die campaign. The idea is that a number of postcards are produced by artists, including some well known ones, to be sold for £25 each but each is sold anonymously without the buyer being aware of the postcard's artist until they buy it.

What is it? It's a mystery for now!

I've contributed something this year which I thought turned out pretty well and I will be posting a Work in Progress for it once the exhibition is over. If you are interesting in visiting the Exhibition it is being held at the Lilford and Stark Galleries in Castle Street, Canterbury. Let's raise lots of money!

Iceland in Autumn: At the End of the Rainbow

Iceland in Autumn

Part 2:

At the End of the Rainbow

Our first hotel was near one of Iceland’s most well-known and largest waterfalls, Gullfoss, the golden waterfall along the river Hvítá. Allegedly named the Golden Falls as the brown glacial water appears to turn to gold during the periods of sunrise and sunset.

Gullfoss sits at the end of a road into the interior of the country at this point the road stops completely so it truly sits in a backdrop of wilderness. There are two steep drops to the waterfall, the first an 11 metre cascade and the second a 21 metre plummet into the sheer-sided canyon below, the bottom obscured from view. 

Gulfoss is awesome, in the traditional sense of the word. Its power and presence leaves you feeling small and vulnerable, a tiny figure at its edge. Spray billows up like steam reaching the top of the falls as the brown water poured into the hidden depths of the canyon.

On the way to our second hotel near Skaftafell we visited another two picturesque waterfalls.

The first was Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall you could walk behind on what stuck me as a rather perilous narrow path. Here fulmars wheeled across the cliff face perching precariously on small ledges and rock doves would occasionally flit across the rock face.

Under the waterfall

We then stopped at Skogarfoss, a beautiful waterfall which reflected in the calm pools around the mountains. 

Its spray illuminated two rainbows in the sunlight which touched the pebbly shores. Sadly no pots of gold though. A trial of steep steps and gappy railings lead up to a platform over the falls form where you can look down to the river below. I managed to snap a photograph of a raven in a backdrop of rainbow spray before the cloud rolled over and the bird decided to fly off.

We finally reached Skaftafell and visited the forests of the National Park. 

What to do if you are lost in an Icelandic forest? 

Stand up - The trees are all very stunted here in fact we'd recognise it more as scrub when compared with British woodland. Birch dominates the woodland accompanied by rowan and shrubs of tealeaf willow and blaeberry. We visited the black waterfall, Svartifoss. It pours over the angular columns of black basalt which were the inspiration in the design of the Hallgrímskirkja church in Reykjavik which we later visited. 

Next week I will be talking about the volcanic side of Iceland, the land of Fire and Ice.