Iceland
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Tell us again, Granddad, about ice
Today is Climate Impact Day, set up to connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather, effects felt from diatoms to humanity. What is past is prologue, and I think of two years ago when we flew back from Iceland. Our plane crossed over Greenland, and I took a few photographs through the jet’s…
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Everybody talks about the climate
…(except the President) but nobody does anything about it, as Mark Twain almost said. A lot more snow than we’ve seen for a while and a brief snap of the Arctic chilly-willies means you must have heard the new cliché in the media stream, if not in person: “So much for global warming.” Meanwhile, the…
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Geological Ruminations II
A trip to Iceland concentrates the mind on the subject of volcanism. Split between the separating-at-two-centimeters-a-year North American and Eurasian plates, Iceland is astride a tremendously deep plume of magma known as a hot spot. It has some major volcanoes, including Grimsvotn, Katla, Hekla, Krafla, and Laki. In 1963, a whole new island, Surtsey, named…
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Final words on Iceland?
You really should go. Jawbone, vertebrae, and rib of a large toothed whale, probably a sperm whale. Exhortation at Vogafjos in Myvatn. A most excellent saga of an adventure.
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Fulmars
In Arnarstapi harbor. I was introduced to the northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) some years ago in the Scottish Highlands. They spend most of their decades-long lives at sea, but breed on far northern cliffs, of which there are many in Iceland. So they were a constant presence on our Iceland trip, a welcome return to…
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Oooh, oology
Hrafn and smyrill eggs. We saw several ravens, most notably two sporting above the cliffs at Vik i Myrdal. Perhaps they were Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s raven familiars, who served as his aides, Thought and Memory. We never saw a merlin, although others in our group did. The eggs above were from one of two…
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Starfish
The Icelandic beaches were remarkably bare of anything other than rocks, pebbles, and sand. We found, in order of frequency, some mussel, scallop, snail, and limpet shells. But our best sightings were a number of starfish that had been washed ashore.
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Snipe
Everywhere except Reykjavik, on both ends of our Icelandic trip, we had sightings of the common snipe (Gallinago gallinago). This species is not to be confused with the related Wilson’s snipe, which we have in Brooklyn, and which was considered the same species until recently, making the confusion understandable. Above each of the farms we…
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Other Icelandic Animals
White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus locorum), seen a number of places in Iceland, finally digitally captured in the small garden behind the Parliament building. Besides birds, Iceland doesn’t have a lot of other animals, including invertebrates. The number of bugs is growing, though, as the world warms. Moths were a common sight, in the long diurnal light.…
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Wildflowers
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk roses and with eglantine. Iceland is full of desolate, hraun (lava) fields, some moss-coated, others bare as an outer planet. The southern sandurs, outwash plains, are dark deserts. But, with all…
Backyard and Beyond 