After a good night sleep during the crossing from Hornsund to Egdeøya, we all woke up to a great day on Edgeøya. In the morning we decided to take a hike at Russebukta. This is a nice place with freshwater lakes, giving us an extra good opportunity for birding.
Here in Svalbard the winter has been “warm and wet.” This means that there hasn’t been much ice in the fjords, but there has been a lot of snow. So there was still a snow/ice cover on part of the lake. Despite that, we saw a beautiful pair of red-throated divers, some long-tailed ducks, and a lot of red phalarope. The red phalarope, with is polyandrous, meaning that the female has the plumage with beautiful colors, will attract males. After mating and egg laying the male will take over all responsibilities, which is unusual in nature.
We also had great encounters with reindeer. There were over 20 reindeer around the lake, and many arctic animals like the reindeers do not have natural enemies. That gave us great photos at a short distance of this fantastic artic-adapted animal. It is also a funny story how the science shows that the males lose their antlers early in the winter and the female late in the winter. The reason for this is that the females need the antlers to protect the best feeding grounds midwinter, since they carry calves. But that raises the question if Rudolf the reindeer (with antlers around Christmas), actually is a male or maybe we should start calling the reindeer “Rudolfa” – due to the probability for this being a female.
The ship then repositioned to the famous Discobukta. This has a large kittiwake colony inside a canyon. This is a unique place in Svalbard; there is no other easily accessible place with such a big bird colony in a canyon, so this is a treat to be able to get to this place. Once you get inside the canyon, one is overwhelmed by the amount of birds in such a small place and the sound of all those birds echoing inside this tight canyon.
A bonus on this hike was also seeing an arctic fox inside the canyon while we were still there. We know there are foxes around bird cliffs, but seeing them together with us inside the canyon was the highlight for many this day.
