Immigrant from the PNW is still hanging around!

It has been quiet on the Faroe Islands, not much is happening, but that is to be expected as the period from late february to start april is usually quiet, except all the breeding birds are slowly trickling in.

28th february I decided to check Eysturoy and there was not much to see, except large numbers of Great Northern Divers and Slavonian Grebe. I went to Gjógv, the northernmost village on Eysturoy and extremely isolated. It was one of the last spots on the Faroe Islands where Tree Sparrow was breeding and also the last spot I saw them, back in 2021. I drove straight up there, a long trip high up in the mountains, before slowly descending into the valley, the village is situated in. A quick scan of the sea yielded two Iceland Gulls and 46 Long-tailed Ducks! Which is an insane number for Faroe Islands. A walk in the village yielded no sparrows, no House Sparrows or Tree Sparrows, so I put up the scope and decided to check the sea. Nothing worth mentioning, except that five Long-tailed Ducks were swimming inbetween the rocks below, so I got a nice photo sesh out of it. I drove to Eiði to see if anything was swimming around and the local Velvet Scoter was surprisingly still hanging around, otherwise nothing worth mentioning. Hvalvík was also checked on the way home and the local Moorhen was also hanging around at the exact spot I found it in 23/11-2025. 

1st March I went to Vágar hoping the strong winds and rain had pushed anything interesting to the shores. I started near the tunnels where a Common Scoter and loads of gulls were hanging around, which is always a good sign, so I quickly jumped into the car and headed straight for Miðvági, where there again were plenty of gulls, but I could find anything rare, though 130 black-headed gulls is quite a high number for Faroe Islands. I could also see that it was a quite strong low tide, exposing large swaths of the beach, which means that Sørvági have a very low tide, which indicates that there will be loads of gulls. And indeed there were. Inbetween all the herring gulls and black-headed gulls I saw a familiar face: the Short-billed Gull I found 4th january was walking around on the beach!!! I called Silas and then I slowly walked towards the gull to see if I could get some nice photos, but the strong wind blew me around like a plastic bag, which made it hard, but not impossible. It took off and landed on the opposite end of the beach so I let it be and drove to my special seabirdwatching spot. Many eiders and alcids, but nothing crazy, except 15 Harbour Porpoises were swimming around in the waves, which was quite cool! After an hour of obs I drove to the beach again to see if anything new had arrived. Nothing new had arrived but I could see the Short-billed Gull fishing near a pier, so I drove to the pier in hopes of getting some close up views. I started throwing bread out and among the many gulls that arrived, there it was! What a redemption! I got some okay views when I first found it, but finally I could indulge in this cool-looking visitor from PNW! After some time it went back to the beach, where got some last photos and then I drove back home.

So nothing new, but plenty of familiar faces.

The colder, the better!

 Winter on the Faroe Islands is usually rainy, windy, cold and dark, with snow usually limited to the mountainstops. But the recent coldspell caused by winds from the SE had pushed plenty of continental birds towards Faroe Islands. 12/2 I was doing surveys on behalf SEV and Tjóðsavni concerning the placement of windmills on the island of Sandoy. On the mountains we found several Snow Buntings and by Sandsvátn we found 3 Northern Lapwings, 3 Skylarks, 1 Eurasian Shelduck, all scarce visitors! Saturday me, Bartal and Silas decided to go to Suðuroy to see if the cold at pushed anything of interest to the island! We hoped for White's Thrush, Great Bittern and Blue Tit. Though none of that came true, we still managed to see some interesting birds. Highlights were Mistle Thrush, 14th record, Tundra Bean Goose, 22nd record and Little Grebe, 18th record, though my personal favourite was a 1st winter Kumliens' Gull that Silas found at Lopra. Other highlights were 4 Northern Lapwings, 5 Skylarks, 26 Great Northern Divers and the sheer amount of thrushes, with a estimate of 30-40 redwings of both ssp. iliacus and coburni, 15+ Fieldfares, 2 Song Thrushes and of course the Mistle Thrush, with the bulk of the thrushes being found in a single village, Porkeri. The bean goose was found while searching for the lapwings and the little grebe was found by a local birdwatcher!

Skylarks are very scarce to scarce visitors, with almost all records from autumn. 8 individuals in february is quite the number

Song Thrush is also a quite scarce species, that is almost always found during influxes, but two in february is quite the records

The star of the show! My second Mistle Thrush on Faroe Islands, with the last being in 2016

It doesn't get more faroese than this

Officially the most boring rarity to find on the faroe islands.

Short-billed Gull!!! A very delayed update

 I have sadly lost almost all of my photos due to my SSD deciding that it should work anymore. Thankfully due to my somewhat lazy disposition, I hadn't deleted all my photos from my SD-card, so I managed to keep a hold on my photos of the Short-billed Gull. I sadly lost my photos of the Lesser Scaup and plenty of other birds, such Bonaparte's Gull, Little Grebe etc. 

4/1-2026 I found what must the be the rarest bird I will ever find - Short-billed Gull (Larus brachyrhynchus), a species that fall under the canus-complex, that encompasses a total of four taxas: Larus canus/Common Gull, Larus canus heinei/Russian Common gull, Larus (canus) kamtchatkensis/Kamtchatka Gull and Larus brachyrhynchus/Short-billed Gull. A complex that has been somewhat a blackhole and not easy to work out until Peter Adrians and Chris Gibbins wrote a thorough and detailed dissemination of the field identification of the aforementioned taxas and the subject of identification of the canus-complex was made more accessible.

The Short-billed Gull record is the culmination of many hours spent studying, documenting and checking the Common Gulls of Faroe Islands. So imagine my excitement, when I found a dark, small-headed common gull standing on the beach at Miðvági and the flight photos I managed to get every spot on for Short-billed Gull. The bird was twitched by Silas Olofson, Bartal G. Simonsen and Barbara Leone and later on (25/1) seen by Pierre-Andre Crochett, the first, and hopefully not last, international twitch of a bird on the Faroe Islands!

One thing that is surprising is that of the three taxas recorded on the Eastern Seaboard of North America, canus and kamtchatkensis are by far the most common ones, while brachyrhynchus is very, very rare. Newfoundland has annually several records of ssp. canus and 1-2 records of ssp. kamtchatkensis, but no records of brachyrhynchus.

Left: Common Gull (Larus canus), right: Short-billed Gull (Larus brachyrhynchus)

And as if that wasn't enough, Bartal also found a Ross's Gull at Skálabotn 21/1-2026, a DREAM bird of mine, but I sadly wasn't able to leave from work and my attempts at refinding it later on hasn't succeeded (yet). That is a species that hurt a lot to miss, is probably the bird I have spent the most hours looking for ever in my life. Hopefully it is still flying around somewhere. As of now, since september, we have had a total of 16 gull-species have been seen, now we just need Franklin's Gull and Ring-billed Gull, then we have recorded every single gull-species that has already been recorded on the Faroe Islands in less than a year. Myself I need to see three more species, then I have seen all gull-species recorded on the Faroe Islands, as I still need to see the Ross's Gull... But after adding an additional species, what else is next? Vega Gull? Slaty-backed Gull? Or do I need to be more humble and hope for a Laughing Gull? It is the Faroe Islands, so you never know!

Common Gull ssp. canus, with characteristics like heinei

Common Gull ssp. canus, with characteristics like heinei - but note the black is reaching PC on the outermost primaries, mirrors on P10 and P9 too big for a typical heinei and large tongue-tip on P7 along with relatively short black wedge on P7 and P6.

White head with streaking limited to neck, yellow-green bill with demarked black band and on other photos, the darker grey upperparts also fitting with heinei.

Five hours of sunlight and plenty a wind

 The days are indeed getting shorter and shorter now. The wind is rarely less than 8 m/s and rain showers the islands periodically, yet there are birds to find, if one looks hard enough. The passerines is not a priority, but five Siberian Chiffchaffs at once in my garden, with a Blackcaps on 26/11 is quite the record! We very rarely get any warblers this late in the year, 28/11 yielded another Eurasian Coot in the local harbour, while I was getting the boat storm-ready, sadly not an American Coot, but any time now, we should get another record. Otherwise, highlights have been a Rook over Tórshavn 5/12, Common Pochard in Gróthúsvatn, along with a male Goosander, Common Shelduck in Sandsvatn, Little Grebe at Heimara Hálsavatn 17th record for Faroe Islands and one of my personal highlights: A nice adult male King Eider in Sørvágsfjørður on 7/12.

Barely annual on the Faroe Islands

Common Pochard and Common Merganser together

Little Grebe - Found it while driving 80 km/h past a lake, made a U-turn and boom, there it was

In the cover of my car, I scanned 600+ eiders, there it was!

So there is no lack of niceties on the Faroe Islands. But winter is for the gulls, and I have had two gull-highlights: A 1cy Great Black-backed Gull X Glaucous Gull at Vestmanna 29/11-2025 and a 2cy mystery gull at Skansin in Tórshavn 12/12 - 2025

Large GBBG-like gull with bicoloured bill with a shape inbetween GBBG and Glaucous Gull

Pale underparts and non-black primaries.

Like an opaque GBBG

But the real nutcracker of a gull was a this one. I can not share any informed opinion of my own, as I am in the deep end with this bird. 

The flying polar bear is honoring us with a visit - a five star weekend

 In the weekend from 22/11-23/11 I was doing a geese survey for the Faroese National Museum, counting the wintering population of geese and swan. Me and Bartal surveyed Suðuroy on 22/11 and Streymoy 23/11. Of course the main goal was counting geese but we were hopeful of finding something "fun" ie. rare. The survey on Suðuroy took us all over the place with highlights being 51 Purple Sandpipers at Famijn and a Great Cormorant at Hvalba, and after finishing surveying the entire island, we hurried back to Hvalba to give at last do-over at Kjógvavatn, the nr. 1 gull-spot in Faroe Islands. Parked the car and immediately a smaller gull standing next to the black-headed gulls. I got the scope out and saw pink/flesh coloured feet, black bill and greyish neck - Bonaparte's Gull! 4th record for Faroe Islands, a last minute bird and it very quickly flew off, showing of its dainty, ternlike features and translucent wings, like an arctic tern.

Flesh coloured legs and dainty black bill = Bonaparte's Gull

I was surprised how tiny it was compared to the black-headed gulls, I thought that first I was looking at a Little Gull

Me and Bartal were excited and the sun set in west, we then went to the ferry harbour and waited for the boat. While waiting, we talked about the we only needed to find Ivory Gull and Ross's Gull and then we are set with rare gulls on Faroe Islands, with a crazy streak of Caspian Gull, Mediterranean Gull and Little Gull (all of them actually seen at the same spot as the Bonaparte's Gull), but while talking we found out that someone had asked in the FB-group "Fuglar í Føroyum" if the bird he had taken a video of was "an albino gull" - NOPE, IVORY GULL! Immediately we started planning when and how, but we knew that it had to wait 24/11, since we had one day of surveying left, and we started counting the seconds until we could go see it.

The next day we started the surveying on Streymoy, with high hopes of finding something fun once again. Bartal wanted to see Common Moorhen and Bullfinch, both annual, both rare birds on Faroe Islands. After several hours of driving we were finally heading to Saksun and we started talking about the ducks we wanted to see, and we started talking about how it had been a few years since the last American Black Duck was seen on Faroe Islands, and no kidding, when we reached the lake right before Saksun, there were five ducks, two teals, two mallards and one American Black Duck! We got out and got some nice photos and then we kept going, we had geese to count. When we arrived at Hvalvík, we found a flock of geese and while counting a Common Moorhen jumped out from a bush and standing feeding with the geese! A nice bird up here far north and very unexpected. We then drove towards Tjørnuvík, which is as far north as you can go on Streymoy by car, seeing no geese along the way, and stopped for 10 minutes at the village. While checking the cliffs for geese, Bartal called and said he had found a Bullfinch! a nice female, showing extremely well and offering some nice photo opportunities. It flew off and we went on our merry way, what a crazy day!

Last time I saw it was in 2010 at 300 meters distance, this was an amazing redemption

Spot on, though the white edge at the back of the speculum looks a bit strong...

Non-breeding adult, a nice addition to the Faroe Islands List

As per usual on Faroe Islands, the birds offer amazing views!

The next day we went almost straight to Klaksvík after we dropped off a good friend of mine at the airport, though we checked the harbours along the way, with Silas offering reassurance that the Ivory Gull was still there by sending photos and video along the way. When we arrived we couldn't find it immediately at the harbour, but we found it on the opposite side of the coast and we hurried towards it, and there we could see it at close range and with an amazing backdrop! Wow, amazing, insane and many other superlatives could describe this bird, probably top 3 birds I have seen, I hope it stays for a long time, I am definitely going to visit it again, spend some hours with it - a dream come true. After the gull we went to Viðareiði to see if we can find another rarity, but no dice and drove home while eating some well-deserved hotdogs. 

What a three day streak of star birds, I hope the rest of winter will be like this, Ross's Gull next?

It is slowly slowing down

 With only 5:30 hours of daylight nowadays birding is somewhat limited, but it is still possible to find some fun stuff. The gulls haven't really arrived in any substantial numbers yet, though 2 Iceland Gulls at Toftavatn was a nice reminder that winter is indeed coming. Duck-wise, nothing crazy has happened, except Goldeneyes have arrived in numbers now, with 1 at Vatn í Eiði and 4 at Sandsvatn and numbers of wigeons has also increased with minim. 125 at Sandsvatn, along with a day total of 7 Grey Herons and arrivals of Greater Scaups. 

But! There are still some fun birds around. 10/11, a visit at Viðareiði yielded 3 Siberian Chiffchaffs, 1 Fieldfare, 1 Woodcock, 1 European Goldfinch, 1 Barn Swallow and 1 Lesser Whitethroat. 

Still some of these pallid delights hanging around, I will eat my new adidas gazelle shoes if these aren't archetypical ssp. tristis

European Goldfinch, a rare bird on the Faroe Islands, but annual

13/11 yielded a Grey Wagtail, Velvet Scoter and a Common Scoter, which I think is one of very few occasions in Faroe Islands that more than one melanitta-species has been seen at one spot.

Double melanitta, Velvet Scoter top, Common Scoter bottom

14/11 yielded yet another Glossy Ibis flying over Sandsvátn, along with 125 Eurasian Wigeons and a long-staying Common Shelduck and Black Redstart at Skálavík, which is the 17th record for Faroe Islands, while the long-staying Little Egret is enjoying the sandy beaches of Tórshavn.

"Don't take too kindly to your kind around here"

Glossy Ibis - approx. 7th record this autumn for Faroe Islands

Black Redstart, it was exciting to that red tail flash across the beached kelp, surprising this is actually my second self-found record

Otherwise we are seeing Snow Buntings popping up, numbers of ducks are on the rise and now the it should be time for an arctic winter wonder in the shape of an Ivory Gull, Ross's Gull or something else.