Such as…THE POLAR BEAR!
This morning Derek ran in the room to awake us with a yell of “POLAR BEAR!” The Polish had spotted a bear on the beach outside the front of the station, cruising in from the point to come check out the boat house:
He meandered on through without incident, and we got an excellent look at our first bear of the season!
One more common visitor to our field site is the Svalbard reindeer.
Speaking of which, here’s another photo of the reindeer antlers we found the other day, this time modeled by Derek against the stunning background that is our office:
To change gears for a moment (but remaining in Mammalia), another animal to be found on Spitsbergen is the ringed seal – we spotted one while breaking through the ice on the Lance:
Although we have seen a couple of Arctic fox, they have unfortunately been at such a distance that none of us has any decent photos yet. Sorry! But they are here…trying to eat the eggs…
Such as the eggs of the Arctic Tern!
The terns nest in the sand and rocks along the beach. Their eggs are extremely well camouflaged – speckled to look just like the sand (to my knowledge, there’s no eggs in the photo above…). To defend these easily step-upon-able nests, the terns dive-bomb at the head of any intruder.
They will actually nail you on the head. It’s fairly intimidating.
The Arctic Skua will also go to great lengths to protect its nest – we have seen skua chasing reindeer and fox away across the tundra. They are gorgeous, zippy fliers, and have developed an interesting way of getting food: they harass smaller birds until they vomit up their fish catch, and then they steal it. Crafty!
Next up is the magnificent Barnacle Goose!
The Barnacle Goose has adorable chicks, which will soon look like fuzzy gray footballs. Here they are running away from us across the snow:
Switching back to sea, the Northern Fulmar, photographed from the upper deck of the Lance:
Back to the Hornsund station…a little Phalarope, not so common to see and very pretty:
Other birds we have seen (that I don’t have proper photos of) include the purple sandpiper, the common eider, black-legged kittiwakes, thick-billed murres, the snow bunting, the Atlantic puffin, the glaucous gull, and…I think thats it. Apparently I have a lot more photos to take.
And finally, the other big mammals on the island…us:
Today’s image-heavy post brought to you by my excessively large stockpile of unposted photos. Enjoy!