Northern Norway and Finland in Late Winter: a Trip Report

David & Barry Bradnum and Jono Lethbridge, March/April 2012

Contents

Overview ........................................................................................................................................... 1

Logistics ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Flights, Car Hire & Ferries ............................................................................................................. 2

Literature & Maps ........................................................................................................................ 2

Accommodation ........................................................................................................................... 2

Site Details ........................................................................................................................................ 3

Trip List ............................................................................................................................................. 6

Overview

The far north of Norway and especially the area around Varangerfjord has long been known as a fantastic birding destination. Historically, birders have generally visited in late spring or early summer to see an impressive selection of breeding species in 24 hour daylight. However, over the last year or two, I’d become aware of a somewhat more adventurous alternative that should also produce great birding – to visit just as winter begins to release its grip and the days start to draw out. The level of species diversity (and the temperature!) is considerably lower then, but some excellent birds and birding spectacles are still on the cards.

So, we decided to give it a try! The basic plan was to fly into northern Finland, hire a car, bag a few Lapland specialities at bird feeders, head up to explore around Varanger for two or three days, and then retrace our steps home again. Happily, it worked rather well… we saw all the key species hoped for, enjoyed some awesome scenery, experienced the Northern Lights and generally had a great time!

Logistics

Flights & Car Hire

We flew to Ivalo, in the far north of Finland, with Finnair via Helsinki at a cost of £232 each. (We didn’t book especially far in advance, and I suspect slightly better deals are available if you do). In general, Finnair come recommended – efficient booking process; swift check-in; acceptable legroom onboard; and reasonable complimentary food and drink. The hand luggage allowance was theoretically 8kg each but this was not checked… to the benefit of one birder with a collection of optics weighing twice that!

We opted to fly to Ivalo since this was convenient for a route north past Neljan Tuulen Tupa (and its bird feeders) in Kaamanen. However, if one wanted to get even closer to Varanger, Norwegian fly to Kirkenes via Oslo at reasonable prices.

Car hire was booked through Budget, costing £266 (€304) for quite a decent new Ford Focus estate, plus a €50 surcharge for taking it into Norway. It came with metal-studded tyres as standard, making it relatively straightforward to negotiate snow- and ice-packed roads at near normal speeds. Driving was generally fuss-free, with very little traffic, and all the main roads well cleared. Just be careful when pulling the car off the road to go birding – I managed to get stuck no more than a foot off the cleared surface when abandoning the car near a Hawk Owl!

Petrol prices were not too much more than the UK, and we spent about £120 on fuel.

Literature, Maps and Information

We used the recently published “Finding Birds in Lapland” site guide by Dave Gosney, and found its combination of annotated sketch maps and bullet point notes to be both clear and concise. Navigation wasn’t exactly taxing, but when we did consult a map, we used the Freytag and Berndt 1:400k map of Norway’s North Cape.

Previous trip reports at this time of year are in rather short supply, but the few I did find were also useful:

Dave Walker et al, March 2004

Jos Stratford, March 2008

Richard Chew, April 2010

A four-page article by Johan Elmberg published in Birding World in 1992 (vol 5, issue 1) also provided a raft of supporting information and tips.

However, by far the most helpful source of recent birding information was Tormod Amundsen, a local birder based around Varanger. His business, Biotope, combines architecture and nature in a unique way – and the website regularly features great bird photos, too. I had a lengthy email conversation with Tormod before we arrived in Lapland, and then a few text messages while we were up there… many thanks!

Accommodation

Date Accommodation Cost Notes

28 March

Naverniemi Holiday Center, Ivalo

£60 room only, plus hire charge for bedlinen

A small and basic (but warm) cabin with two bunk beds and bathroom at a campsite on the edge of Ivalo – fine, given that we were only there for a single night, and arrived mid-evening.

29 March & 1 April

Neljan Tuulen Tupa, Kaamanen

£85 per night B&B

A room with two bunks and bathroom in the motel – separate cabins are also available in the summer. We were woken early each morning by Red Squirrels living in the roof above, and of course the bird feeders outside are superb! The motel also served generous (albeit rather unimaginative) meals at lunchtime and in the evening.

30-31 March

Vestre Jakobselv Camping (towards west end of Varangerfjord)

£85 per night, plus hire charge for bedlinen

A new and spacious cabin with lounge/kitchenette, spotless bathroom, and separate bedroom with bunks and two single beds. Recommended!

Total cost of accommodation was approx. £410 for five nights, equating to £135 each – not bad

for a part of the world renowned for exorbitantly high prices. To keep costs down, we self-catered in Vestre Jakobselv, having stocked up with food at the supermarket in Utsjoki just before leaving Finland!

Weather

Unsurprisingly, it was a pretty cold trip, though generally the weather was fairly kind given what it could’ve thrown at us! In the Finnish forests, the air temperature was down below -20°C overnight, rising slowly to around -10°C by day. However, this was typically accompanied by clear skies and still air, so with enough warm layers on it wasn’t unpleasant; keeping fingers and toes warm was the greatest challenge, as usual.

Around Varanger, air temperature was notably higher (around -5°C most of the time), but it was much windier, and consequently felt significantly colder! It was also cloudy most of the time, and the day we travelled to Vardo and Hornoya island was occasionally punctuated by heavy sleet and snowstorms… lovely!

Itinerary

Day 0

Arrived Ivalo approx. 1900 and collected car with no problem. Short drive to find our cabin at the Naverniemi Holiday Center, then a rather upmarket (but delicious) meal at the Hotel Ivalo – Reindeer tenderloin with chocolate sauce!

Day 1

A fairly leisurely start, with birds around the cabin including Bullfinch and Great Spotted Woodpecker. The drive north to Neljan Tuulen Tupa take about an hour on the main road, but we opted to detour to a bird tower to the NW on the minor 9710 road (shown as ‘Toivoniementie’ on Google Maps) since several people have seen Hawk Owl here. We didn’t see much, but the views were superb.

Continuing onward, we were soon booked into our room and then back outside to enjoy the bird feeders to the right of the building as you look from the road (the ones around the back don’t get much sunshine for photography!). Superb views of numerous stupidly tame Pine Grosbeak, and equally confiding Siberian Tits. A couple of pairs of Siberian Jay were more wary, but still came in to feed on fat behind the restaurant a few times. Many, many photos were taken over the remainder of the day! As the light started to dim, we took a return trip to the bird tower, but with the same general lack of birds.

After dinner, and a couple of welcome cold beers, we capped an excellent day with decent views of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) just before midnight!

Day 2

After a brief spot of photography around the motel and spotting a smart Arctic Redpoll under the feeders with at least four Common Redpoll mates, we packed up and headed north once again. After a brief pause to watch an impressively bushy Red Fox wandering around by the road, our first stop was Utsjoki, just on the Finnish side of the border with Norway. Therefore this was a strategic site to stock up on food and petrol at vaguely sensible prices!

Continuing across the border, we soon reached Tana Bru, and despite the lure of nearby Varangerfjord, headed north up the east side of the (completely frozen) Tanafjord on the road towards Batsfjord and Berlevag. We’d been tipped off that the area around Harrelv (just after the first large island in the fjord) had been good for Hawk Owl recently, and this was one of our main targets. Disappointingly, our first slow cruise through didn’t produce any owls at all, so we continued on to reach open water in the SE corner of the fjord. A raft of 60+ Long-tailed Ducks were smart, and we also noted a Black Guillemot.

But we had owls to find, so back we went! A roadside walk through decent looking habitat near the radio mast still failed to find anything, and we were getting a bit nervous. Happily though, as we drove slowly south, Jono spotted a Hawk Owl perched on telephone wires just outside a small copse. After a grade A faff trying to find somewhere to turn round and then park off the road (safe

from the occasional speeding articulated lorries!), we all enjoyed cracking scope views and took some photos. What a bird!

After a friendly local helped us extricate our snowbound hire car (in some style, complete with handbrake turns), we headed on south – only for Jono to spot another Hawk Owl, this time perched in a patch of birch woodland. Again, it was pretty tolerant of our presence, and we even heard it singing a couple of times, throat feathers vibrating!

By now, it was mid-afternoon, and we headed back towards the Varangerfjord. Some brief birding stops, including one at Nesseby, produced a swirling flock of 50+ Kittiwakes around the head of the clear water, a single female King Eider, six Common Scoter, and scattered flocks of Steller’s Eider numbering about 80 in total. It was pretty windy, and consequently cold, though, so we continued on to our cabin at Vestre Jakobselv and a delicious home-cooked pasta-based meal!

Day 3

This was the day for Varangerfjord! We headed out east fairly early, checking various roadside sites along the way, quickly finding more Steller’s Eiders and an assortment of other seaduck. A 1st winter Iceland Gull was our first of the trip, in the harbour at Kiberg. Although the air temperature was hovering around -5°C, a strong wind was blowing spindrift across the road, and occasional flurries of fresh snow added to the freezing scene. By the time we arrived in Vardo, a full-on blizzard was howling through the town!

Fortunately this passed fairly quickly, leaving us to photograph the Kittiwake colony near the centre of town, and arrange a boat trip across to Hornoya and its seabird colony – we found the operators’ phone number at their office near the tourist information centre (which was closed, unsurprisingly). Killing a bit of time before the boat departed at 12, we headed out onto the headland overlooking Hornoya, quickly finding a smart pair of King Eider. Scanning over the island, I picked up a big bird of prey: initial consideration of an early Rough-legged Buzzard was quickly halted when it turned sharply and gave itself away as a huge Gyrfalcon! Although quite distant, we were delighted to see this, another target bird.

Having negotiated a slippery floating pontoon to get onto the RIB (and paid about £30 each for the return trip), we were promptly whizzed across the short crossing into a hailstorm, noting a Glaucous Gull on the outskirts of the harbour in the process. After

cautiously disembarking, we settled into the wonderful wooden shelter below the cliffs – if you position yourself carefully, you can get out of just about any wind, but still watch the birds. Thousands of Kittiwakes wheeled around, Ravens cronked overhead… and best of all, that Gyrfalcon sailed through directly overhead!

Priority number one from the hide was to locate a target bird: Brunnich’s Guillemot. The auks hadn’t quite returned to breeding ledges yet (though apparently some had come back a few days before, but then left again), but a large mixed raft was bobbing about in the channel between the island and Vardo town. There were several clusters of Brunnich’s in the flock, perhaps surprisingly straightforward to pick out.

After enjoying these, we took a walk south along the path to the far end of the island, taking in stunning views of four species of auk flying past at eyelevel (turns out Brunnich’s are fairly easy with close flight views as well, with completely clean flanks), in addition to loads of Shag perched nearby. The Gyr also made a few more appearances, usually located as a result of the resulting Kittiwake chaos, but always hammering through at great speed and giving only brief views.

After two or three unforgettable hours, it was time to return to Vardo on the RIB, once again enjoying a few King Eider en route. These were nothing compared to the numbers we saw off the coast near Kiberg, though – a mass of mixed seaduck included 1000+ each of King and Common Eider, together with heaps of Long-tailed Duck and a few more Steller’s Eider. Brilliant!

Day 4

With pretty much all of our target species in the bag, we decided on a day of exploration on our way back to Tuulen Tupa. Rather than return through Utsjoki, we opted to drive around the south side of Varangerfjord, out to the Russian border at Kirkenes, and then southwest into Finland on the 971.

We stopped off briefly to take some touristy photos of the church at Nesseby, bagging another nice Iceland Gull into the bargain, and also checked out the birch scrub near the road junction at Varangerbotn – nothing much here, and the fjord was frozen solid this far up. Various stops towards Kirkenes yielded relatively little bar awesome scenery, though a few Snow Buntings were charming as ever, and a pair of Velvet Scoter were new for the trip list.

After avoiding getting arrested for taking photos at the Russian border, we retraced our steps along the E6 beside the Neidenfjord. A random stop here to check out some well vegetated gardens produced a long-overdue ‘big bird’… literally! An adult White-tailed Eagle was soaring around over the fjord, paying closer and closer attention to a small group of King Eiders, making a few hunting passes low to the water. After a few attempts, a female bird was fractionally too slow to dive, and the eagle plunged in to grab it. What followed was quite unbelievable! We all expected the eagle to pause for a moment, and then haul itself back out of the water with its prey. It paused for more than a few moments (I remember wondering whether they ever get into serious trouble with waterlogging, as young Ospreys can do)… and then proceeded to start swimming to a rocky islet, at least 75m away. Basically the sea-eagle was rowing with its wings, making very slow but steady progress: who knew they could do this?! Certainly none of us!

On reaching the islet, it had a bit of a shake, and then made a start on plucking and eating a very much still alive eider – gory stuff. At around the point where the eider finally stopped moving, a second eagle entered stage left to grab a share, clearly bigger, so presumably the adult female bird. Although we were a fair distance away, we watched the whole scene unfold for quite some time.

Eventually we headed south again, on a lengthy drive back through the Finnish forests. A few more random stops produced a brief Siberian Jay by a roadside picnic area, but not a great deal else before we reached Tuulen Tupa once again for another comfortable evening.

Day 5

Sadly we only had a small amount of birding time first thing, before packing up and heading off to Ivalo airport again – about an hour’s drive, now on completely snow- and ice-free roads. It was still enough to note all the speciality birds, though: Siberian Jay and Tit both still easily seen, along with the ever-present (and apparently ever-hungry) horde of Grosbeaks!

After a somewhat excessively swift change in Helsinki, and before we knew it, we were heading over the north London reservoirs, the infamous Wanstead Flats, and back on the ground in a climate suddenly 20 degrees warmer.

The trip had been an undoubted success – very easy to organise in all respects, and taking in brilliant views of some fantastic birds that just can’t be seen the same way elsewhere. And an amazing experience, too… the landscapes, and especially the aurora, are just stunning. Go there!

Trip List

Highlights / notable species shown in bold.

Species Scientific Name Location / Notes

Mallard Anas platyrhynchos few along Varangerfjord

Common Eider Somateria mollissima several thousand, Varangerfjord and harbours

King Eider Somateria spectabilis A large flock, 1000+, with other seaduck under ‘Domen’ cliffs north of Kiberg, plus few smaller groups. None close in harbours for photography, though!

Steller's Eider Polysticta stelleri numerous small groups (<100) along Varangerfjord. Seen well in Kiberg and Vardo harbours

Long-tailed Duck Clangula hyemalis hundreds at various places along Varangerfjord

Common Scoter Melanitta nigra small groups seen off Ekkeroy and in the Neidenfjord

Velvet Scoter Melanitta fusca pr in Neidenfjord

Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator small numbers along Varangerfjord

Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo

European Shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis breeding birds on Hornoya

White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla just one pair seen on the Neidenfjord - but awesome views as the male caught a female King Eider on the water, and then swam >50m to a rocky island with it. After he’d plucked the hapless duck, the female flew across the fjord to help him eat it!

Gyrfalcon Falco rusticolus superb views of a young bird over Hornoya, giving a flypast at least three times

Purple Sandpiper Calidris maritima numerous small groups along Varangerfjord

Common Gull Larus canus singles along Varangerfjord

European Herring Gull Larus argentatus

Iceland Gull Larus glaucoides single 1st winter birds at Nesseby and Kiberg

Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus at least 3 seen, all around Vardo and Hornoya

Great Black-backed Gull Larus marinus

Black-legged Kittiwake Rissa tridactyla breeding colonies in Vardo and on Hornoya, and feeding parties along the fjords

Common Guillemot Uria aalge several hundred on the water off Hornoya - but few on the cliffs

Brunnich's Guillemot Uria lomvia small numbers amongst Guillemots off Hornoya, 50+

Black Guillemot Cepphus grille few singles in various fjords (e.g. Tanafjord, Neidenfjord)

Razorbill Alca torda small numbers amongst Guillemots off Hornoya

Atlantic Puffin Fratercula arctica singles off Hornoya

Rock Dove Columba livia

Northern Hawk-Owl Surnia ulula two near Harrelv along the road to Batsfjord, north of Tana Bru. Awesome!

Great Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major one near Ivalo

Meadow Pipit Anthus pratensis few on Hornoya

Eurasian Rock Pipit Anthus petrosus around Vardo

Siberian Tit Parus cinctus 3+ at Neljan Tuulen Tupa

Great Tit Parus major few around Ivalo and Neljan Tuulen Tupa

Siberian Jay Perisoreus infaustus 2 pr at Neljan Tuulen Tupa

Common Magpie Pica pica

Hooded Crow Corvus cornix

Northern Raven Corvus corax

House Sparrow Passer domesticus

European Greenfinch Carduelis chloris

Common Redpoll Carduelis flammea 4+ at Neljan Tuulen Tupa

Arctic Redpoll Carduelis hornemanni just one, at Neljan Tuulen Tupa

Pine Grosbeak Pinicola enucleator 30+ at Neljan Tuulen Tupa - superb views

Eurasian Bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula near Ivalo

Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis surprisingly, a small group at Neljan Tuulen Tupa under feeders; small numbers at one or two sites around Varangerfjord

(Total: 42 spp)