kittiwake | Entries tagged with holidays

On our last night in the North, we had a traditional Icelandic Christmas meal, starting with pickled & marinated herrings on rye bread, washed down with brennevin (Icelandic schnapps), followed by smoked lamb with peas, red cabbage & white sauce.

I especially like the marinated herrings, I'm not sure what they are flavoured with but it turns them pink.

Current Mood: mellow

On holiday in Iceland, I saw the following birds:
eider duck, fulmar, red-necked phalarope, arctic tern, golden plover, raven, kittiwake, guillemot, arctic skua, puffin, great black-backed gull, white-tailed sea eagle, shag, great northern diver, barrels golden-eye, mallard, scoter, greylag goose, tufted duck, redshank, black-headed gull, slavonian grebe, whooper swan, bittern, widgeon, redwing, oyster catcher, dunlin and a cockerel.

As it was breeding season, I also some good examples of protective parenting:
1) Arctic Terns diving at our heads when we were walking close to their nests.
2) Golden Plover calling loudly, and her chicks scattering in all directions as we passed
3) Mallard pretending to have a broken wing to distract us from her chicks - not very successfully as the chicks were following along about a metre behind her.

Current Mood: flighty

Last weekend I got back from my summer holiday, an organised tour of the North of Iceland. We stayed on the Snaefellsnes peninsula and then near Akeyruri. I've been to Reykjavik before, so this time I wanted to see a different part of the country. We went on walks, saw lots of geothermal activity, and lots of birds (it was the nesting season, so all the sea birds were on land). Unfortunately our whale watching trip was cancelled due to bad weather, but that just gives me a good excuse to go back to Iceland again. It wasn't good enough weather to see the midnight sun, but it never got dark, just a bit dusky around 1 am.

Iceland was wonderful - except for the weather. I was mostly wearing a t-shirt, jumper and jacket with a waterproof over the top, and never took my walking boots off except for the evening meal.

Current Mood: wistful

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The Kittiwake's Nest

Tales from the Cliff Ledge

Entries tagged with holidays

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Icelandic Sojourn

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