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It is always interesting to see what has happened overnight. Has there been a major arrival of new birds or will we just see the same old faces? We started the day with early morning visits to Grafarvogur and Leiruvogur, the two small estuaries on the edge of the Reykjavík conurbation. There were still no colour-ringed Black-tailed Godwits and only 15 more in the flock than yesterday. Lots of birds are presumably either waiting for better take-off conditions in the UK or struggling with whatever the weather has to offer them over the North Atlantic.
We decided to take a trip down to Eyrarbakki and Stokkseyri, two former fishing villages on the south coast of Iceland. If there were new arrivals to be seen, this is where we would find them. As we came over the mountains, we appreciated just how different the weather had been down here. There was still a good 25 cm of fresh snow and the only nine Black-tailed Godwits that we found all day shone brightly in their red breeding plumage.
We watched for signs of arriving birds for the next two hours and were surprised only to see two pairs of Whooper Swans flying low as they came in from the sea. The only other visible migration occurred as the tide covered the beach and small flocks of Oystercatchers that had been refuelling after their trip from the UK, took off in small parties to complete their journeys to other parts of Iceland.
Given that we had seen so little in the way of bird movement during the day, we were not surprised that there had been no addition to the flock of Black-tailed Godwits at Grafarvogur, when we checked again in the afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow.
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