A little bit of ice and not a lot of green - Part 2

The Safari continued northwards as part of the Ocean Wildlife Encounters team aboard Borealis heading towards Isafjordur in the Fjordlands of NW Iceland.It was a sunny day with a cool breeze but very nice when in the sun and out of the wind. From the ship in the harbour there were lots of Arctic Terns buzzing about back and forth fishing and then taking said fish over the town to their nesting area and then flying staright back for more fish.

Town itself was a modern, utilitarian affair with a few old buildings scattered around the older parts of the harbour.

Around the harbour Kittiwakes loafed around on the warehouse rooftops. A bit different to the more usual Herring and Black Headed Gulls back home.

And instead of Carrion Crows hanging out around town it was Ravens cronking from the rooftops.

Just outside the ship's berth a small dock for fishing boats held a flock of between 30 and 40 Purple Sandpipers, easily the most we've ever seen together and probably more individuals than we've ever seen before too.

There was a rather large Lion's Mane Jellyfish in the dock too, we tried to get a pic but without a polarising filter it proved impossible.

Outside the dock gate was a sandwich board advertising a two hour afternoon whale watching trip...yes! But would we get back to Borealis before she set sail, 'all abourd' time was 15.30. The very helpful young lady behind the desk in the adjacent lodge assured us the skipper knew about our timings and 'promised' we would see whales as there were about 60 in the local fjords. Too good to miss - out came the credit card!

We had a little time to kill so when to find some more onshore wildlife, some snacks for lunch and a mooch around town. All the Arctic Tern activity naturally attracted the attention of the local Arctic and Great Skuas and every so often there would be a commotion as a gang of terns mobbed an approaching skua, the nearer the skua got to the nesting area the more terns joined in and the louder the commotion became. But all of a sudden the terns began making a very different agitated call and dozens of them went skywards a hundred or more feet and continuing to rise. We put our bins up and just caught a large falcon streaking away from us beneath them...no terns were mobbing this one, far too risky? We'd just seen the back end of a Gyr Falcon and later confirmed by a passenger who'd had better views of it going the opposite way back towards the cliffs on the other side of the bay to the ship.

One type of bird we'd expected to come across by now was a diver of one species or another, if only we'd looked in this bay as one of the passengers, a young (by cruising standards) birder had a cracking summer plumaged Red Throated Diver.

Butties were scoffed by the dock waiting for our ride which duly arrived on time off-loaded a family that looked like they'd been on a camping expedition somewhere up-country, once they were off we were on.

And soon out into the fjord leaving Borealis and a Viking cruise liner far behind and where, hopefully, whales awaited us.

As you can see this far north there was bits of snow and ice still lingering on the higher more sheltered parts of the hills, hence the blog title a little bit of ice (in Iceland).
It wasn't long before our keen eyed skipper spotted a distant whale blow and he put the hammer down to get us in good viewing range 'tout suit'. Wow - could that boat motor!

The next hour and a half were spectacular, dreams come true time.

Spectacular and well worth bending the credit card for. We reckon we saw somewhere between 15 and 20 Humpback Whales altogether. And all against the spectacular backdrop of Iceland's rugged scenery.

Not bad for 90 minutes watching, certainly won't see that in any 90 minute watch off Blackpool promenade no matter how hard we try.

Also out in the fjord were lots and lots of Puffins and we certainly tried to get an in-focus snap of one/some and failing miserably. The ones on the water dived before we got close enough and those flying past laden with Sand Eels were fast so very tricky from a very wobbly small boat - there was quite a bit of swell out there.

We did get one flying close by but just as the camera was about to lock on to it it changed its mind and locked on to the huge photobombing Humpback Whale that surfaced in front of it instead - how annoying...Not.

Just in case you'd fogotten what Puffins look like when they're close and properly focused here's a lovely pic by passenger Karen Burns taken on a sightseeing boat down a different fjord.

What a fantabulous boaty ride and as guaranteed we were back aboard Borealis just in time for afternoon tea and a very welcome cuppa.

As the crew pulled up the anchor and we started to move away from the dock IH noticed that the moon was in a very photogenic postion against the cliff opposite.

The Viking ship left minutes before us and they should have got fantastic views of a Fin Whale just off their port bow just a bit too far ahead of us for decent pics. There was plenty of other whakle acticvity too with a couple of big breaches from Humback Whales but unfortunately very distant.

Before we'd got to the mouth of the fjord AB picked up a Grey Phalarope fairly close to the boat and a guest reported a Minke Whale that we'd all missed. Once out of the fjord the Viking boat went north along the coast and we headed south west into the open ocean. Close to the coast there were a few more auks including Brunnich's Guillemots and Razorbills, we missed both...grrr - we would have liked pics of them for our Photo Challenge as we would have of the several small parties of Little Auks too.! Further offshore shearwaters came back into play with plenty of Manx Shearwaters, a couple of Cory's Shearwaters, another speciers we failed to get a pic of, and four Sooty Shearwaters but, maybe strangely considering how many we'd seen so far during the voyage, no Great Sheatwaters. All too soon it was sunset and the last chance to find a whale blow'

The following day was cooler with some cloud and a sea state 4, lots of white horses making spotting dolphin splashes difficult to see and the wind moving whale blows around making them difficult to discern as from which species they came. It was a long slow day that improved as the afternoon turned to evening, although guests had reported both dolphins (probably White Beaked Dolphins) and a Minke Whale before breakfast. Our notebook says we had a Humpback Whale at lunchtime and Sperm Whales and Fin Whale blows after dinner. Birdwise it was shearwaters again. The Big Four had been reduced to a Big Two as there were far fewer Puffins and only a couple of Gannets seen all day. We spotted a distatnt petrel which can only have been a Leach's Petrel up this way. IH found a flock of 'probable' Grey Phalaropes and AB saw a juvenile Sabine's Gull. A Dunlin called as it flew round the ship a couple of times without landing and a flock of Golden Plovers went past us early in the morning. Another lost Black Headed Gull was also seen. Once again the day belonged to the shearwaters and now we were a bit further south Great Shearwaters were by far the most numerous.

With a supporting cast of fewer than 10 Cory's Shearwaters, several Manx Shearwaters including a weird pale one that might have been a leucistic individual, a trick of the light or something else altogether and a single Sooty Shearwater. The only other bird of note was an Arctic Skua giving one of the many Kittiwakes a whole load of grief right above the ship.

The best thing of the day was saved until last though and was something we'd never even heard of before. Once it had got too dark and too cold to stay on deck our entourage of enthusiatic wildlife spotting guests had ebbed away it was time for a well earned pint in our regular music bar. Only tonight we found someone else was sitting in our favourite seats - I mean how very dare they!!! That meant we were 'forced' to sit elsewhere and this time with the band out of sight round the corner we sat facing the windows and as the sun set AB said "Did you see that?"; "The Green Flash", and he didin't mean the iconic tennis shoes from yesteryear. We saw it too just as the last millimetre of sun was above the horizon the orange glow turned to green and then was gone. Apparently it's a refractive trick of the atmosphere and the air has to be incredibly clean which is probably why it's rarely seen from land where there is dust, smog, smoke etc
We awoke the following morning to calmer seas, blue skies and the greenland coast.

Not very green and a lot more snow and ice than Iceland despite being only slightly further north than the northern tip of the Shetland Iseles at this point. We alsways thought that there was an outside chance we'd get to Iceland after all it's a fairly popular destination, not too distant and several friends have been and told us how good it is if a tad on the very expensive side, but Greenland - no; never in our wildest dreams did we think we'd ever get to Greenland and yet here we were not far off the coast and sailing right towards it. Not only that but we had our first ever iceberg, a Humpback Whale, Fin Whale blows and a Leach's Petrel all before breakfast - what else would the day hold?

More big icebergs was the answer.

Well what do you expect - it is Greenland and sort of famed for its ice after all.
At sea the Big Four was still only the Big Two with only one Puffin and no Gannets seen but plenty of Black Guillemots close to the coast.
Then it was into Prince Christian Sound we went...oh wow...more scenery than you could shake a sweaty stick at

In the sound we had Iceland and Glaucous Gull, Great Black Backed Gulls and shed loads of Kittiwakes.

But really it was the scenery that took centre stage. Glaciers, glimpses of the icecap, intusive volcanic dykes and other rock formations, waterfalls; the Sound had it all, a veritable geographers and geologists paradise...

and icebergs that looked like swans.

All this spectacularness was broughth right down to earth when we sailed past this perfectly formed glacial U-shaped valley staright out of a school geography text book.

One of the passengers, a keen geologist, had been through here five years ago and this valley was then filled with a glacier, as you can see there's nowt left of it and a significant sign that all is not well with our planet.

Whilst in the sound we got a brief view of a couple of Harp Seals and hoped for the iconic sighting and subsequent photo of one hauled out on an icefloe. It would have happened but when the passengers saw it from the bow of the ship we were otherwise engaged at the stern helping our OWE colleagues give a binocular and telescopes workshop. We did however see the White Tailed Eagles that flew over.

The only negative we could find to say about Greenland so far is that it wasn't very green.

Leaving the sound we sailed north and had a slight change of plan, we would be visiting the furthest north of the ports first rather than last. So up to Nanortalik we headed arriving overnight.

No town in Greenland is of any real size and Nanortalik is one of their bigger places but still only manages a population in the high hundreds. The port area was small and it was a tender ride from the ship to the dock. It had the feel of a frontier town about it once we'd got ashore. We wanted to see some Snow Buntings so followed the calls we heard through and industrial estate until we found them up on a bluff by a comms tower.

On the way we passed some familiar looking orchids but a new species for us, Northern Green Orchid. Similar in form to our marsh and Common Spotted Orchids but differing in having green flowers rather than the purple of ours.

A spalsh of blue was provided by Arctic Harebells and there was a new species of willowherb for us too, Arctic Fireweed whose pinky flowers were all over the shop.

The town could hardly be described as pretty but it did have a feature church and interestingly many of the houses had paineted on windows rather than the real thing, mabe the price of windows is prohibitive with everything needing to be imported or glass loses too much heat in the winter???

There were a small number of butterflies among those buttercups but we never got close enough to get an ID on them, precious few other insects around doing any pollinating but therewere midges doing the biting thing!

In the harbour we had both Iceland and Glaucous Gulls.

Now Nanortalik means Place of the Polar Bears but we'd have to have been very lucky to arrive when one was present as apparently they're not that regular or frequent a visitor despite the name. There had, however, been one about three weeks earlier, some passengers were shown video of it ambling menacingly around the outskirts of town. The nearest we got to one was on this mural down the main drag.

Mid-afternoon was sailing time so it was back to work spotting wildlife from the decks. The harbour area had a little island with a massive glacial eratic rock sat on it. Ooh we do like a glacial eratic...

Sailing out we had more White Tailed Eagles, Humpback Whale blows, Minke Whales, three pods of Harp Seals and Long Finned Pilot Whales were reported by a guest. Wheatears and a Redwing were also seen by some of the guests.

Our next stop was 'just around the corner' a very big corner, Narsarsuaq, home to a former US military hospital for soldiers wounded during the D-Day Landings. This place was tiny compared to the metropolis of Nanortalik. During the sail in we had a couple of Humpback Whales and two Sabine's Gulls of which we managed to see one. Other good birds included, Arctic, Pomerine and Long Tailed Skuas, the latter we could not get on for love nor money. We also missed a Red Necked Phalarope which was too close to the ship oin the wrong side.

There's not much to Nanortalik just a huge runway, with a conference centre, a few distressed and repurposed industrial buildings a smattering of houses and a cafe/tourist information centre/museum and a hill with a comms tower. But it also has the Greenland Arboretum aka a hill with some proper trees on it and a glacial lake in a valley of wildflowers.

An Arctic Fox ran across the road in front of some guests close to the top building, lucky so-n-so's. We had to put up with 'just' lots of Wheatears and Common Redpolls.

Abandoned American paraphinalia was spotted along the wildflower valley including a fire hydrant and an old chimney from a long gone house overlooking the lake.

We were with IH on this walk and between us reckoned we both fit up the chimney if a Polar Bear appeared as there was nowhere else to run and we hadn't taken advantage of the rifles on offer at the hire shop!

Bees and insdeed other insects were few and far between in the flower valley so we were lucky to find this solitary bee which has the look of a leaf-cutter bee but we could well be miles out on that tentative ID. We also had two species of hoverfly and later back on ship a bumble bee flew over the stern.

The agricultural land opposite Narsarsuaq was the only agricultural land we saw and was home to the first Viking settler of Greenland, Eric the Red. Who's reconstructed house you can visit for a fee. 

The bright blue iceberg we learned was composed of very very old compressed ice probably drifted down from the nearby ice fjord Qooroq

On our wanders IH found this rock covered in whatb we now know as Elegant Sunburst Lichen, if you're going to be a lichen why not be bright orange and have a awesome name too. What he didn't know when he picked it up is that said lichen grows on rocks which have had their nutrient status enrichedby animal pee...hmmm cue lots of subsequent hand washing!

From the bus back to the harbour we spotted a Great Northern Diver in one of the roadside bays but couldn't reloacate it for a very distant pic once back aboard.

While waiting for the ship to set sail a White Tailed Eagle flew across the harbour and landed almost out of sight behind some tall vegetation where it looked to be eating something, indeed a Raven was sat close by eagerly awaiting some scraps. And if you're ging to watch eagles and whales on a mild day in remote Greenland you might as well do it with a cocktail in hand as this guest did.

The sail back down the fjord towards our final destination in Greenland was full of icebergs and Kittiwakes with Arctic Skuas patrolling for the chance of a stolen meal.

Iceland Gulls were also numerous and guest John Riley got some good shots of Harp Seals.

As dusk fell more icebergs were in evidence.

And there were yet more icefloes that looked (if you use your imagination) like swans

That night passenger Karen Burns was alerted to the possiblity of an aurora from her phone app and went out for a shufty.

We had a look the following night at around 02.00 but it was cloudy...ah well maybe next time.

And that ends Part Two.

Where to next? Part three takes us to our final destination, Quaqatoq and then back across the Atlantic to Blighty.

In the meantime let us know who's watching what with a cocktail in their hand in your outback.