Twitching At The Top Of The World: A Guide To Arctic Birds

It is no exaggeration to call the Arctic one of the most important zones on the planet for birdlife. A dizzying number of birds migrate to sub-Arctic and Arctic latitudes in the boreal summer to take advantage of the extended daylight, seasonal balminess, and booming ecological productivity for breeding. The diversity and numbers can be astonishing. The coastal tundra of northern Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example, welcomes close to a million birds of 200-plus species every year, marking as it does the convergence of no fewer than six migratory flyways encompassing both Eurasia and North America.

The wide-open Arctic tundra and its ponds are big-time nesting habitat, and so are Arctic cliffs, from mountain ledges and rugged mainland coasts to offshore islands and sea stacks. Different kinds of birds, naturally, choose different seasonal habitat at the top of the world and bulk up for offspring-rearing and the fall migration on different food sources, all of which—along with the timing of seasonal snowmelt and sea-ice patterns—help determine when a particular species arrives and how long it stays.

And some birds actually reside all year long in the Arctic, from certain raptors and ravens to a variety of seabirds and sea ducks. With climate change reducing the extent and duration of sea ice and lengthening the open-water season, scientists have observed more and more birds that formerly mainly migrated out of the Arctic after summer staying around deep into winter.

Arctic cruises offer absolutely stellar birdwatching, so in this guide we thought we’d introduce you to some of the species you might be able to observe. The following is by no means an absolutely exhaustive overview of all birds that inhabit the Arctic at least seasonally, but more of a sweeping survey touching on some of the major avian groups and some notable species that can be seen on trips to this amazing high-latitude realm.

Arctic Seabirds

Given the extensive and seasonally highly productive ocean expanses in the Arctic, it’s not surprising that many species of seabirds can be found here, at least for part of the year. Some of the most iconic Arctic/sub-Arctic birds belong to this category, including puffins—which range from northern temperate waters into the southern edge of the Arctic—and Arctic terns, famous for executing the longest known migration in the animal kingdom: journeying between the Arctic and the Antarctic, chasing an endless polar summer.

Other Arctic seabirds include guillemots, murres, dovekies, auklets, and murrelets (all in the auk or alcid family, like puffins) as well as the formidable great skua, several species of jaeger (notorious kleptoparasites), the far-traveling short-tailed shearwater, and a cadre of gulls, from Arctic/sub-Arctic specialists such as the ivory and Ross’s gulls to the hulking glaucous gull and familiar, über-widespread herring gull.

Many seabirds are seasonal visitors to the Arctic. Often these are Arctic-nesting species, but other birds may show up later in the summer into the early fall after the breeding season to fatten up ahead of fall migration. And some Southern Hemisphere birds winter in the Arctic: that is, they spend the austral winter here. For example, short-tailed shearwaters migrate from nesting grounds in New Zealand to the Bering and Chukchi seas in the boreal summer. But some tough-as-nails seabirds overwinter in the Arctic—the black guillemot, for example, which feeds during the cold, dark season along the pack-ice front and within the pack via polynyas and leads, and the ivory gull, which may trail polar bears to scavenge their kills.

Arctic Waterfowl

Numerous species of waterfowl also utilize the Arctic, especially during the nesting season. Grand migrations bring species such as tundra swans, snow geese, greater white-fronted geese, cackling geese, and brants to tundra breeding grounds. Along with numerous ducks that include portions of the Arctic in broad breeding ranges, such as mallards, pintails, and American wigeons, a number of spectacular sea ducks are exclusively Arctic/sub-Arctic nesters, including the handsome long-tailed duck as well as the large (and gorgeous eiders): the common, Steller’s, spectacled, and king, which winter in northern temperate and sub-Arctic latitudes.

Arctic Waders/Shorebirds

Many wading birds or shorebirds also use the Arctic as a breeding ground, and a number of species are among the absolute champions of migratory birds. The bar-tailed godwit, for instance, pulls off better than 6,000 miles of non-stop flying across the Pacific to migrate between New Zealand and Australia and its nesting areas in Alaska. Red knots spend the boreal winter in southern Africa and southern South America and nest on the Arctic tundra in the summertime.

Other of numerous Arctic-breeding waders (among them other long-distance migrants) include sanderlings, dunlin, American golden-plovers, northern wheatears, ruddy and black turnstones, and a number of sandpiper species, such as the spoon-billed, semi-palmated, Baird’s, white-rumped, and pelagic.

Arctic Grouse

The stocky upland gamebirds known as grouse reach the Arctic in the form of ptarmigan, sometimes colloquially called “snow chickens.” Two species are Arctic-dwellers: the willow and the rock ptarmigan, the geographic ranges of which show much overlap; both change color across the year to camouflage themselves against winter snow and summer tundra-scapes. (A couple of other ptarmigan species, the white-tailed ptarmigan and the red grouse, inhabit more temperate climes in moorland and alpine habitat, respectively.)

Arctic Perching Birds/Songbirds

A number of perching birds (passerines) utilize the Arctic tundra (and sometimes adjacent boreal taiga) for nesting grounds, including the common redpoll, the American tree sparrow, the Lapland longspur, and the snow bunting. The latter, among the northernmost of all passerines, winters in the northern temperate zone, often—like other tundra-loving birds such as snowy owls and gyrfalcons—favoring similarly open landscapes to their summer top-of-the-world haunts, such as prairies, fields, and beaches.

Some perching birds even tough it out during the Arctic winter. Along with the American dipper, which resides year-round in parts of northern Alaska, these notably include the common raven, biggest of all songbirds and an icon of the Far North. As big or bigger than a buteo hawk, the all-black, regally bearded, and famously brainy raven is an opportunistic omnivore, its up-for-anything diet—including carrion left behind by bears, wolves, and winter-kill—helping it persist even through the dark, cold-stunned months of the Polar Night.

Arctic Raptors

Filling out the top of the avian food chain in the Arctic (along with the great skua) are a number of birds of prey, aka raptors. The best-known is probably the snowy owl, among the largest owls in the world and a hot “commodity” for birdwatchers all over. An ace lemming hunter, snowy owls—especially immature individuals—are known for periodically visiting southerly temperate zones in large numbers for the winter, but many adults stay in the Far North year-round, including out on the sea ice.

Just as regal as the snowy owl is the gyrfalcon, biggest of all falcons and sometimes (like male snowies) almost pure-white. A lethal combination of speed and power, the gyrfalcon is top-tier coveted among falconers and was often historically reserved in that sport only for royalty.

The gyrfalcon’s smaller cousin, the peregrine falcon, is also an Arctic cliff-nester—though far from exclusively, given its cosmopolitan range. It’s celebrated for the velocity of its stooping dives, which have been estimated to reach or exceed 200 miles per hour and which are typically aimed at avian prey.

A familiar and widespread winter hawk of northern North America and Eurasia, the rough-legged hawk or buzzard, spends the summer on the Arctic tundra. Known for its feathered (aka booted) legs and lanky, long-winged form, the rough-legged hawk prefers wintering range of tundra-like expansiveness, and thus is usually found among temperate cropfields and grasslands in the cold months.

The golden eagle, another impressively widespread raptor, also sometimes cruises the Arctic tundra in the summer. It’s a regular visitor to the Arctic Coastal Plain of the Alaskan North Slope, for example, where its appearance is often timed to coincide with the birth of caribou calves.

And various sea eagles reach at least sub-Arctic haunts, including the white-tailed eagle, which includes Greenland and Iceland in its vast mainly Eurasian purview, and the Steller’s sea eagle, probably the biggest eagle in the world, which reaches its northernmost extent in the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea.

Birdwatching on an Arctic Cruise

From the “bird cliffs” of Svalbard and Iceland (which hosts more than half the global population of Atlantic puffins) to the rocky beaches and tundra expanses of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Greenland, our Arctic and sub-Arctic cruise routes offer reliably rich pickings for twitchers at the top of the world, including the chance to see species otherwise rare—even vanishingly rare—to spy in more temperate areas.

And with onboard lectures by natural-history experts and the option for onshore excursions, these itineraries are ideal for maximizing your birding opportunities while learning more about the complex and precious Arctic-ecosystem web these feathered marvels are intrinsically part of.