First week on Disko

One week has passed since we arrived to Disko Island on the west coast of Greenland. The Arctic Station is fantastic and until today we have been the only people staying here so we have had all the facilities for ourselves. Summer has been late this year and today was our first “summer day” with sunshine and temperatures that allowed you to take your jacket off. Previous days have been both foggy and windy with some occasional rain.

The Arctic Station

There are lots of wheatears around, but so far we have only seen one colour ringed male. When I looked on Adam’s webpage, I found that it has been spotted around the station before and apparently arrived here as early as first of May. Still lots of snow around here then.

We spend our days searching for wheatears around the station and as far away as we can possibly walk in areas with nice wheatear habitats. Around the station most pairs seem to have chicks already, but further away we mostly see singing males and every now and then a male chasing a female, so there the breeding seem to be delayed for some reason.

Wheatear nest found in a crevice outside Ilulissat

So, unfortunately I still don’t have any news about wheatears with geolocators. We are doing our best to keep our spirits up and in the meantime we cannot complain about the amazing scenery and the humpbacks, fin whale and white-beaked dolphins feeding in the bay. A few days ago we saw two arctic foxes playing with a stick and chasing each other around. Wonderful!

Fin whale