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Friday July 20th
Ny Ålesund

T°C: 8°C

T°C plus windchill: 4°C

Cloudy, light wind

Bas is sleeping, Olga went for a tea, Sofie is checking the tundra and Maarten has been to Longyearbyen to pick up his son. The snowbuntings have been fed. Is now time to update this blog.

The Dutch station is still full of guest, for our greatest pleasure. Last monday, Olga arrived to study parasites of snowbuntings. Before she landed, we localised the nests of this small passerines. Of the size of a robin, they winter in Europe, from Danemark to the North of France. Long trip for such a small bird. After having been ringed, four chicks stayed in a soft cage: we feed them every two hours and colletc their droppings for analyse.


We modified our normal rythm to be able to make a 24h feeding: instead of waking up at noon and going to bed around 4am, I wake up at 6am and go to bed earlier. As the rythm of the geese team is not very "sociable", this is good to see people we don't usually meet.


The clouds ran over Kongsvegen glacier, and dwelt in the fjord. Hopefully, like last week, a nice weather will chase away the fog stuck against the mountains and make whales and belugas swim back to the fjord.

Tuesday July 31st

since the 20th, the weather has been to good to spend time in front of a computer. So we dovetailed the catches: the kayaks slide until the geese and gently push them back to the shore where the nets wait for them. The sea is usually quiet; sometimes the waves make you go up and down and give the catch more difficult. However, by dint of perseverance and quick sterrages, we generally manage to push the birds to the trap.

Then, we take them one by one and weigh, measure, ring, sex them and sample 2ml of blood before releasing them to the sea. Their hearts beat wildly even though we try to be as gentle and fast as possible.

On Saturday, the fog came to us and kept us out the world during the whole catch. Out of the world in a village out of the world. Even if planes land and take off twice a week, boats bring theirs tourists and the internet makes it so we are aware of what the government does, the feeling to be somewhere else, in a place aside, is strong. People pass by, Sofie and Olga already left after a short stay but great and wonderful moments, and the sun doesn't stop turning, lower and lower. People say that what happen in Ny-Alesund stays in Ny-Alesund, so everyone tries to bring a small bit back, hidden in ones memory.

When the fog lifted up, the boat we heard anchoring appeared, huge near the jety, nucleus of a strange atome, which electrons were a cloud of boats bringing passengers to the quay. 2000 tourists arrived to multiply by 20 the village's population.

And meanwhile, impassive, forgotten remainings of an old race rust quietly...

see you
yvan