Lifer on a Dirt Road

On the first day of my WINGS ten day birding tour of Iceland, we headed out from Kelavik International Airport and birded a dirt road between the airport the capital of Reykjavik.

We were birding from our Mercedes Bird Mobile and it served as a moving blind, allowing us to get close to the birds, including the hundreds of Arctic terns that were roosting on the road.

One of these birds is not like the others. A black-headed gull amongst the Arctic terns.

As we where driving north on the dirt road, we stopped to look at a common ringed plover (rhymes with “lover”) when I looked off to my right at what appeared to be a feathered periscope poking out of the green grasses. I put binoculars on the object and it turned into a lifer, the first one of the tour! A rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta).

The ptarmigan seemed a little agitated by our presence. Perhaps the bird was on some eggs. The ptarmigan flushed, flying away from our van so we move off down the road.

We stopped at Garðskagi Lighthouse where I saw more black-footed kittiwakes (perhaps 1,000) than I have ever seen before and just below us we had amazingly close looks at common eider both males and females with their newly hatched chicks.

Now that’s a lot of kittiwakes! On the California coast I occasionally see a lone individual roosting with other gulls in the winter. This was something amazing. And kittiwakes were in breeding plumage.
The beautiful male and female common eider, the most common duck seen in coastal Iceland.
A mother eider leading her perhaps newly hatched ducklings down to the water for the first time.

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