A purple sandpiper (Calidris maritima) in its breeding plumage, on Svalbard almost two years ago.
This one was ringed and called X6A, on the same place two summers earlier. It was registered only there three summers in a row, and have not been registered later on.
I actually like them better in their grey winter plumage, like we see them when they visit our part of the country.
Yesterday I saw one for the first time on our island, sitting on a skerry as we were out in our boat. It let us get close to photograph it. I look forward to show that one as well one day.
They breed from the arctic islands of northern Canada, eastwards to Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and northern Scandinavia across to Western Siberia and the Taymyr Peninsula. In the high arctic they breed at low altitude on the tundra, sometimes far from the coastline, but in the subarctic regions of Sweden and Norway it breeds on barren mountain sides near the limit of the frozen ground.
Birds breeding at high latitudes migrate south and spend the winter on rocky shores on both sides of the north Atlantic.
(Fjæreplytt i sommerdrakt, in Norwegian)
Check out more photos of them in the links below the line!
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