5. An Arctic Journey

 

In 2009 a journey to the Arctic was undertaken visiting Spitzbergen (Svalbard) and Greenland. This talk focuses on the fauna of the region and although birds do not feature highly as much as mammals, three encounters with a total of ten polar bears makes up for this lack. The expedition visited some remote areas in the  North East Greenland National Park that had not seen humans for several years including fjords that were glacier and iceberg filled. On one occasion the northern lights filled the dark skies for a whole evening. Mammals such as muskox, artic hare and fox were seen together with a variety of seals and a number of bird species – ptarmigan, purple sandpiper, northern fulmar, little auk, glaucous gull, golden plover, gyrfalcon, snow bunting, northern wheatear, sanderling and kittiwake. During ocean crossings whale sightings were not uncommon. Trappers and whalers’ huts were encountered together with a visit to an isolated Inuit village on the east coast of Greenland before returning across the Greenland Sea to Iceland.

 

Duration 90 mins