2013: A Top 10 in Pictures

I am currently on Christmas break back in the UK so while there won't be anything new for you until January I have decided to list my top 10 pictures that I have taken while I have been in Iceland.

So in number 10:

I remember this trip being my first trip working in Reykjavik, it was a fantastic encounter with a pod of White-Beaked Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris). They were very curious and were very happy to bow ride with our boat. This meant some cracking pictures and close ups of the dolphins. This is a great surface picture with a good look at the beak of the dolphin too.

9: 

This is my favourite Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) named Snow White, this whale would basically guarantee an interesting tour. While it would often display aggressive behaviour it was always in interesting ways.
This is just a standard fluke dive, but the whale raised the fluke very high. It was likely going for a very long dive. I caught the perfect shot of the fluke at its highest point.

8: 

Here is another Humpback Whale, only this time it did something that only a lucky few will see. It was lunge feeding at the surface! I remember this very clearly, I also remember missing the best shot! The whale had gone down for a dive in what had been a normal encounter, then out of nowhere this whale lunges right beside the boat!
It was so fast I couldn't capture the moment but I didn't mind, I got to see the best moment and get pictures of all the other (still excellent) moments. A truly awesome sight to see.

7:

Without a doubt the best picture I have of a Minke Whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata). Minke whales are usually more cautious and shy than Humpback Whales, plus they are much smaller (8-10m long) and never raise their fluke. So getting a noteworthy picture of them is rather difficult. But on this trip we had a Minke that had no qualms about our presence, and this allowed for a picture I am very proud of.

6: 

This is another picture from the first trip in Reykjavik, this picture is special for a number of reasons. Any good picture of multiple dolphins is a treat, but being able to see the beak of the closer one and a clear three spot tattoo patch on the further one just make this one of my best.

5: 

I don't remember a story behind this picture, I just think it's rather pretty! And that is good enough for the list!

4:

While I have had some better real life sightings of the Northern Lights this is the best picture I have of them, it has taken me quite a while to really get to grips with photography when it comes to the aurora. So in the future I hope to get some picture that'll dwarf this!
But this is still an excellent pic, the lighthouse and the stars with the aurora make this something I love.

Time for the top 3: 

When I took this picture I decided to dedicate a whole post to it, I really do think it's excellent. This is a Common Guillemot (Uria aalge). It is a diver and will never allow you to get close before going for a dive, but this was an unusually brave bird. And I am very grateful, the level of detail and clear water means this is a picture I am very proud of!

2: 

White-Beaked Dolphins are very acrobatic animals, most of the time pictures of these actions are either far away or too fast to get a picture of. This a fantastic combination of a nearby horizontal breach that is also timed very well.
This is my 2nd favourite picture because of the difficulty of getting such a picture and how perfectly it turned out. All in focus with the light and colour just right!

And the champion of 2013: 

I know! I know! It's not a whale breaching or a stunning aurora, it's a Black-Legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla). But to me this is the ultimate 10/10 perfect picture. The water is glassy still, the bird is in full focus, the colours contrast perfectly and the level detail is incredibly high.
This picture shows how it's not always about capturing an already spectacular event, but to take something completely normal and portray it in a seriously beautiful manner.
That is the true power of photography.

Thanks for reading, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (Takk fyrir að lesa, Gleðileg jól og farsælt komandi ár!)

Humpback of the month

On the back of some favourable weather we have actually been going out on the water! And the weather has been pretty darn spectacular, not warm though. The temperature ranged from -10°C to -17°C. Add in a very cold wind and you have some very numb fingers and toes.
But the skies were blue, the mountains were white and the sea was still. And there isn't much else you can ask for!

Or can you?

You can even ask for a humpback whale!! We had heard reports from a friendly captain the day before of a humpback whale at Hafnarfjörður (Hap-na-fyur-thur) which is a town adjacent to Reykjavik so we immediately set sail to that location!

We spotted a blow in the distance and headed in that direction. Then suddenly right by our boat the whale surfaced, both us and the whale were clearly startled and the whale dived immediately. But for the rest of the trip the whale was incredibly calm and cool around the boat, it was travelling very slowly and was happy to come right up to the boat. It was never overtly curious but never attempted to move away from us.
It would have been the perfect sighting, but it never once raised its fluke. This makes sense as it was swimming basically on the shore, the water was under 10 metres deep! It would only raise the fluke if it needed to dive deep and diving 5 metres doesn't qualify.

The Esjan mountains were look gorgeous in this weather!

The humpy took a dive just in front of Mount Keilir, which translates literally as cone mountain.

You can see just how close to land the whale was! Standing on the shore you would have gotten some incredible views of the whale!

Thanks for reading!

It's a Winter Wonderland!

I can't actually remember the last time we went out on the boat, never mind the last time we went out and had a successful tour!

Last week the weather basically consisted of a lot of rain and a lot of wind, the worst conditions possible expect for a volcanic eruption really.

But yesterday and today we have had some excellent snow! And we've been truly making the most of it!

Yesterday was the annual tradition of the company I work for (Elding) where they go to a local school and bake hundreds of cookies to give as Christmas gifts to the many hotels and businesses that promote Elding Whale Watching. It was a night of many Christmas songs (Gleðileg Jól!) and lots of delicious baking (we may have tasted a few). And afterwards after a lot of snow had fallen we all had a snowball fight, as mature adults do!

And today even more snow had fallen! So I went for a bit of a walk and got some nice pictures of the city in the snow and some of the bird life attempting to cope with it all!

Our home in the snow!

A few redwings taunted me as I tried to catch the perfect shot.

But I'm sure I won this round, gotcha!

Just lovely!

The Reykjavik city pond is named Tjörnin. The ice is always pretty!

Day 27, the pigeons still think I'm one of them... Diary of a mallard.

Two pink-footed geese having a stand off on the ice. Loser is doomed to swim!

Female pigeons are much prettier than the males!

The weather looks like it may improve over the next few days so we can only hope!

Thanks for reading!

Orca! It happened!

The entire time I have been in Iceland I have held out hope that we would get a chance to see Killer Whales, on every trip we all held a slight hope that in our peripheral vision we would see a large, black, triangular dorsal fin rise out of the water!

And this week my friend Charla came to visit, (we lived together in Húsavík) and on the one trip she decided to join me on the boat....

OORRRCCAAAAAA! (Orcinus orca)

We were downstairs as the boat was heading back to harbour, I was just doing a data sheet for the dolphins we had seen earlier when the guide announced "There is a large black fin at 10 o'clock". I grabbed my coat and camera and ran upstairs, and after a minute or two it appeared! A lone male killer whale all in its beauty and splendour!

The dorsal fin can tell us the sex and age of an orca

The tall, triangular shape tells us he is a male. A females would be shorter and look more like a minke whales dorsal.

The wave/bump in the middle of the dorsal tells us this guy is older as this feature only appears after 16 years. 

It is actually very unusual to see a lone orca, as they normally travel in pods and have extremely strong bonds in those pods. We have a few theories as to to why:
He had gotten ill and so the pod may have kicked him out as he was a burden.
He is a transient killer whale, these are less inclined to travel in pods and will hunt for mammals alone sometimes.
I believe that this was a scout who was checking out the food content of the bay, we can hope that he got a good impression and brings the whole family!

Thanks for reading!

A long awaited journey

The weather has been beyond awful in the last two weeks, I have only managed to take a boat trip twice in that time. Both provided many dolphins for us to feast our eyes on but only the most recent provided anything worth seeing/mentioning.

The first of these two trips gave us a very large pod of dolphins that were content to be near our boat for a long time but rarely came very close. The birthing season for white-beaked dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) is from June to September and so we saw a few gorgeous calves! I really wish I had a picture but as they are so small the surfacing part of their body is almost invisible in the waves.

The second trip heralded more dolphins for us, this pod again carried calves and juveniles but the highlight was a number of adults vertically breaching over and over again. As I have previously mentioned, this is a feeding technique which is meant to stun and drive any fish under the surface into a tight ball. And it never fails to delight!

We are currently experiencing a long storm in Iceland at the minute, and for the next few days I don't think a break will occur. Though next week I plan on voyaging with some friends along the Snæfellsnes peninsula, in the winter there is a population of resident killer whales that has been noted in that area. And we hope to catch a glimpse of them! And if I do, I will take hundreds of pictures to show off!

Thanks for reading!

Airwaves and Auroras

So this weekend my parents came to visit! And by coincidence they arrived during the Iceland Airwaves festival, the largest music festival in Iceland. I had thought that all but a few of the events were just for festival wristband owners but it turns out I was incredibly wrong! Over the course of 5 days there were over 400 events across the city, of course these were all on over the same few hours each day. So it would only be physically possible to see maybe 50 of these events, I saw 6. Though that was because we had not planned on this festival even happening so we had plans to see the Golden Circle again (but in Winter!) and eat at restaurants every night.

Out of the 6 acts I saw there were 3 that were totally stand-out performers: Vigri, The Anatomy of Frank and John Grant. With John Grant being the major highlight, I would recommend everyone looks him and the other bands up. They're all worth a listen.

The Golden Circle proved as magnificent as last time, my love of things icy made everything look even more magical to me! Pictures will explain it all better:

This time of the year is when the brown trout make their migration to their spawning grounds so we got a great sight of the trout (very slowly) moving up river.

Ice!

Lots more ice!

Ice plus waterfall!

Ice + more ice + huge waterfall. Wow.

And on the last night of this mini-holiday the weather forecast had told us that the sky would be completely clear and that there was a chance of auroral activity. So we headed out to the lighthouse at the end of the Reykjanes peninsular (where quite a few aurora enthusiasts were also hanging out) and lo and behold! The aurora presented itself!

When you've got the stars and the city lights AND the aurora, you get something magnificent.

You can even see the lateral movement from the aurora here

Look at that! The lighthouse with a gorgeous swirl above! Plus other camera lights but we'll just ignore those.

As you may have seen my aurora pictures keep (in my opinion) improving, I really hope to convey what I actually see but this kind of photography is difficult and I hope to keep getting better. But no picture can ever really translate the emotion that this spectacle delivers, I've seen a lot of people reduced to tears watching them and you really cannot blame them. I don't know if there is anything as humbling and inspiring as the aurora, especially when it is in full colour wheel mode!

Thanks for reading!

Dolphins are the friendliest of animals!

Over the last week we've had some awful, awful weather! So boat opportunities have been limited somewhat lately. But the last two days have heralded a lot of dolphins, and they have been perfect. Maybe the rough seas give them the natural energy that prompted them to breach and leap out of the water and bow ride with the boat. It was beautiful stuff! And I got some absolutely cracking pictures!

What a beauty! This is a near perfect shot! Boo-yah!

I'll never tire of these emergence pictures, they always look fantastic!

This highlights just how close the dolphins were and when the sun is shining you can see right into the water.

Unfortunately the weather looks like it won't be improving over the next few days, who knows when I'll be back on the boat!

Thanks for reading!

Minke in the city!

The title may be a little misleading, there was no minke whale spotted in the city. I'm pretty certain the land invasion won't happen for at least another 6 months. No, this whale was rather right outside of the harbour and behaving in a special fashion.

We had only been sailing for 10 minutes before the first sight of the minke whale happened, I was sat down not even looking for anything yet. When someone shouted they saw something at 12 o'clock I was prepared for another 60 second long sighting of a harbour porpoise that would have been more irritating than useful (they're just and extra piece of data that you can't really use). But when we stopped for a look, I certainly wasn't expecting the signature long, sharp dorsal fin of a minke whale!
This one single sighting lasted over an hour, we wouldn't normally have stayed for that long with just one whale but the behaviour was just too interesting! It was feeding just below the surface of the water, unfortunately we couldn't see the actual feeding but we knew it was feeding because it was rolling around at the surface. A roll is performed by a whale when it needs to position its mouth at just the right angle to engulf it's prey before it scatters. This was the first time I had seen this from a minke, when it rolled it even showed it's fluke for us!
Minke whales never show their fluke during any typical behaviours and I have missed seeing the flukes of the humpback whales I was so familiar with in the north. Honestly I have been getting a little bored of minke whales, they are so predictable and consistent unlike humpbacks and dolphins. So this special sight was something I will definitely cherish, especially because by next week there is a good chance all of the minkes will have migrated away!

We also saw dolphins. Go dolphins!

With the magnificent Hallgrímskirkja in the background this minke sure knew how to frame a picture!

Fluketastic. Finally!

Thanks for reading!

Man oh man, it's been busy!

Well quite a bit has happened over the last few days, I haven't had the time to provide a big update so this'll be a post covering a number of topics.

So over the weekend I was attending the Arctic Circle Conference in Reykjavik at the Harpa conference centre (a big glass building which is very nice). And it's safe to say that it was excellent and I learned more than I was expecting to, I had thought prior to the conference that it would have been very scientific based, while there was a number of scientific studies shown (the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment was very interesting) the conference actually boasted a very high number of oil/gas/mining/investment companies and a bunch of political figures.
The Hero of The Russian Federation gave a speech which the head of Greenpeace decided to burst in and demand the release of the 30 protesters in Russia, the Russian guy gave a very long winded no.
But the real lesson that was learnt was that before this weekend as a biologist I had only ever seen the Arctic as a biologist and a romantic. Whereas now I have a more wide view, I have seen how so many different companies and countries want to use and exploit the Arctic without shame and they will not be running opposed. I have seen the future of the Arctic, and the news could be a lot better.

But enough with the doomsday talk!

Two nights ago I had the best aurora experience I have had in my time here, and I was in the city surrounded by lights. But it was still the brightest and most vibrant I have seen it. I was genuinely running around screaming (though people who know me will not be surprised). And last night there was supposed to be a special event where the city lights in Reykjavik were to be turned off in order for the whole city to see the lights, but sudden cloud cover cancelled that event. Also England won their football match that night, so it was a good night overall!

Yeah I love this. Posy but frankly sums up my feelings for the lights. God I love them so much.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. A few thanks, I've been doing a lot more independent activities and with that I've come across quite a few excellent people. To the Latvian woman who I spent the conference with when I couldn't find my colleagues thank for giving me someone to talk to!

To the couple in the pub who forgave me for blocking their view during the football match and bought me a drink, thank you!

To the couple of the evening boat trip where we saw nothing, thank you for giving me insight and tips into life after an environmental degree!