Winter arrives at 64°N

There was a definite change of season last Friday, not an imperceptible shift but a hammer blow from the North. The wind had been blowing stiffly from the north all day but in the morning I'd had unobstructed views from the huge windows at work across the wind-whipped bay to the 1,000 metre pyramid of Skarðsheiði. It changed early afternoon when a wall of white began to materialise, sweeping south reducing visibility from more than 100 kilometres to a few metres in a very short space of time.

Whilst colleagues cursed the wretched weather, I found it rather exhilarating to witness the arrival of such a tangible weather front. The howling winds and snow meant that any birding was completely out of the question, and I was bemused to find my car, in an underground car park all day, completely covered in snow. Just as light will keek through the smallest hole, so apparently will snow.

Saturday dawned calm and white, and I somehow let YK convince me to go and look for birds in the afternoon. As I expected it was very quiet, and in fact I spent most of the afternoon in the car listening to football scores and boning up on bush-shrikes and sunbirds for our upcoming trip to Africa and let YK do most (all) of the walking. The usual suspects were in Grindavík, i.e. Great Northern Diver Gavia immer, Harlequin Duck Histrionicus histrionicus, Long-tailed Duck Clangula hyemalis, Common Eider Somateria mollissima, Ruddy Turnstone Arenaria interpres and Purple Sandpiper Calidris maritima. The most spectacular sight of the day was a flock of around 600 Snow Buntings Plectrophenax nivalis at Garður. Snow Buntings are common but pretty inconspicuous in Iceland, until it snows, when they become unmissable, and it's almost always the first bird on my year list on 1st January. Sunday saw the return of the two American Wigeon Anas americana on my local patch and a good selection of other birds down in the bay, but numbers of Redwing Turdus iliacus were well down. Presumably most of those that are going to leave Iceland this winter have now done so, but some hardy birds will remain in the city all year.