Svalbard red-throated divers and long-tailed ducks

Spitsbergen, Adventdalen valley, 3 June 2013. In my earlier blog post I did mention red-throated divers in a lake, but did not post the photos.

Here they are.

I also mentioned long-tailed ducks. This is the male.

And here is the female.

And, of course, grey phalaropes, nearly omnipresent in the marshy Adventdalen tundra.

Birds and Mammals of Svalbard estimates between 150 and 300 grey phalarope breeding pairs in all of Svalbard. Extrapolating from the small bit of Adventdalen which I saw, I would say it might be more than 300.

In the evening, over thirty glaucous gulls near a restaurant in Longyearbyen. They are quite common birds here.

Not so common is a lesser black-backed gull among them. According to Birds and Mammals of Svalbard, this usually more southern bird nests irregularly on Bear Island between continental Norway and Spitsbergen. It occurs annually in Svalbard, “in small numbers”.

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