Greenland Cruise

On the 25th of July a chartered Finnair flight took some 200 cruise guests to Kangerlussuaq, W Greenland, to board our ship M/s Kristina Regina for an 11-day cruise around southern Greenland,  finishing in Reykjavik, Iceland on Aug 4th.

I’ve been to Greenland once before, in 1984, so I knew more or less what to expect, but moving between the places in a boat and seeing it all from the sea side made a huge difference. With a boat you can access places, which would be impossible to reach from the shore, as there are no roads in Greenland.

The bird list was going to be short, that was no news,  but there is always that remote chance of finding something unexpected on a sea voyage like this. And then there is the scenery of course. Stunning icebergs, deep fjords with steep shores and all those (receding) glaciers reaching the coast. And on the top, like the icing of the cake, you can see the massive ice cap of the interior.

The birding highlights for me where the many Iceland and Glaucous Gulls scattered all around the coast, with hundreds around the main fishing harbours. Practically all were adults, and very, very few immatures were seen at all, which seemed a bit odd. Where are they?  Also the numerous Fulmars, both light and dark, were a delight to watch. Several groups of adult Pomarine Skuas, as well as a few Long-taileds were seen from the boat, among the more evenly scattered Arctics.  Arctic Terns were already far out at sea with their young, having already started their autumn migration, as were the flocks of Red-necked Phalaropes encountered way off shore.

The highlight after all, was probably finding the “wintering” Great Shearwaters east of mainland Greenland. On the morning   of Aug 2nd the first birds seen from the boat were 2 Great Shearwaters (position N61 x W37), and after this these fine birds could be seen throughout the day, mostly in small groups of up to ten birds, until darkness fell. Most of them seemed to be resting on the sea, with 50 in the biggest group, and they took off only to move out of the way of the approaching vessel. In all we must have seen a thousand or more (but only one Sooty Shearwater). In the evening I finished watching at position n63 x w33, and by then the shearwaters had become scarcer. The next morning, at n63 x W27, now well inside the Western Palearctic limits, we only saw 1+1 Great Shearwaters, instead the first Manx Shearwaters started to turn up as we approached Iceland.

All in all a great tour, although we didin’t see any hoped for Sabine’s or Ivory Gulls. But then, that’s what birding is about.