After our morning exploration of Isfjorden we had a bus trip exploring some more wildlife options around Longyearbyen.
We began at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault up on the hill above the airport with the hope of ptarmigan and snow bunting. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is storage facility aiming to preserve supplies of seeds from around the world. It is an ideal location being 130m into a sandstone mountain surrounded by permafrost and in a tectonically stable region.
There are no staff on site with the facility being controlled via an adjacent building which is monitored and managed remotely. The advantage of this is that it minimises the need to access the vault which minimises temperature fluctuations.
The area is quite desolate but the buildings are interesting and the control facility offers some good reflections of the surrounding landscape.
Having already photographed Snow bunting I was hopeful for some ptarmigan which apparently were still in their white plumage. Sadly, none were seen so I spent some time exploring up the slope from the seed vault where I found the Snow bunting feeding amongst the low vegetation as shown at the top of the post.
Next stop was to investigate the huddle walrus we had seen in the morning from our boats. Resting walrus are pretty chilled to the point that waiting for them to do something interesting is the challenge.
A bunch of sleepy blobs is not very photogenic so the hope is that they will move at some stage. Waiting for this to happen can require patience and then some luck to capture an interesting interaction.
Walrus are lovely textured creatures that lend themselves to monochrome processed images.
As always I have an eye out scanning for birds and was excited to get my first opportunity on a flying Black Guillemot. They are very sweet little birds and their red feet are a flash of warmth in the cold environment.
Next time we will continue with our tour and visit another excellent bird venue close to the Longyearbyen airport.
Wildlife photos with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 800mm f6.3 VR S or Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR S. Svalbard GloBal Seed Vault photos with Apple iPhone14 Pro.
