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Location: Alkefjellet, Kapp, Palanderbukta, Hinlopen Strait, Bråsvellbreen
Highlight of the Day: Seeing the world's third largest ice cap (next to Greenland and Antartica) + seeing a polar bear with its kill What I Learned:
If I was a bird, I would be an Arctic Tern. You will have to keep reading to find out why.
Today was another day that opened me up to the world. The day started at Alkefjellet along the coast of Hinlopen Strait, where we observed one of the largest concentrations of nesting seabirds in Svalbard. Fact: the eggs are cone-shaped to adapt to the cliff-side nesting. Later in the morning, we disembarked along the Hinlopen Strait and hiked along the ridge. It was so warm, I was sweating in the Arctic (yes, you read that correctly). You never would have thought we were in the Arctic because it was so desert-like. Perhaps the most striking was the circular stone rings covering the ground from the freezing and thawing of the water above the permafrost. Arctic Terns Arctic Terns are seabirds, so they spend their whole life on the ocean, except for when they nest. They have the longest migration on the planet, yet they go back to the same rock they were born on each year. No matter how far it migrates, it always returns to this rock. No matter where I travel or where I go, home is home. Guillemots They produce pointed eggs- each egg is individually coloured and marked. Both sexes incubate the egg (birds understand equality). Dovekies, the smallest of the guillemot family, raise chicks for 2 weeks and then the chicks will jump from the ledge to follow their fathers for the next 2 months at sea. The mother will have no further contact with them after they leave the best. (Side note: There is a great documentary on Netflix called Life Story that features this). They are sometimes deemed the 'penguins of the north', although they do fly, it is usually low over the water, using their feet as rudders.
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