“Moss girl in Grindavík,” “Rísstarli, Fiskjjallar vi gard,” “Hofn, Þorgeislundur: kollgræningi,” “Vogsósar in Selvogi, undiagnosed grapefruit,” “Reykjavík, near the Board of Governors: cow starling,” and “Barn thrush in Tjarnarbyggð.”
Six messages. They look harmless enough until you actually read them, at which point you’re either spitting out your morning coffee or quietly mourning a missed chance to fill the tank. I fall into that second camp. The pull to drop everything and go is almost physical — because somewhere out there is a bird that shouldn’t be here, and until I’ve seen it with my own eyes, something feels unfinished.
An Autumn for the Ages
This autumn in Iceland has been the kind of season birdwatchers will still be talking about in ten, twenty years — huddled in damp hides, half-whispering, as if saying it too loud might break the spell. Iceland sits out here in the North Atlantic like an accidental rest stop, and exhausted birds from multiple continents keep landing on it, apparently reconsidering their life choices. Every single day has felt like something new.
“This autumn will be whispered about in damp bird hides for decades.”
The autumn of 2025 gave us the Bobolink, the Philadelphia Vireo, the Brown-Headed Cowbird, and more besides. For the truly committed, it’s been the season of half-eaten lunches, lava fields crossed at speed, and at least one cancelled dental appointment.
I’ve been lucky enough to see and photograph nearly all of them, usually by getting in a car and driving hard. Some might call that compulsive. I prefer dedicated.
The Brotherhood of Binoculars
Iceland’s hardcore birding community is small and close — mostly Icelandic men over fifty. A couple in the west, a handful in the north, a cluster of us holding things together in the southwest, and rumour of a lone figure out east somewhere.
We do meet in person occasionally, but the thing that really brings us together is a message of weight landing in our WhatsApp group, which goes by the name Flækingsfuglavakt — “The Vagrant Watch.” When we finally find ourselves standing in the same spot, greetings are minimal. A nod, maybe a “daginn.” If excitement or doubt creeps in, someone might say “Hefurðu séð fuglinn?” — “Have you seen the bird?” A sociologist would call it bonding through shared purpose. A passerby would see four middle-aged men standing in the rain, pretending not to be cold. Honestly, it’s both, and I wouldn’t swap it.
The Gamble of Birding
Among the most dedicated, talking is something that happens after you’ve got a proper look. That might take seconds. It might take days. It entirely depends on what the bird decides to do.
Is it worth an overnight drive across the country? Pushing back a mortgage payment to catch the next flight north? Running a red light in downtown Reykjavík? When the bird is rare enough and conditions line up, a hardcore birder doesn’t stop to weigh the options.
There’s a story I like about a city employee found flat in a muddy ditch, camera pointed at a rare Siberian bird — only for their boss to cruise past, having received that morning’s sick call personally. In birding at this level, the risks tend to come with the territory. This autumn has rewarded those willing to take them.
A Jet Stream Hotel
Iceland has around 77 resident breeding species — not a long list, though it includes several that nest nowhere else in Europe. What makes this place remarkable is the geography. Plonked in the middle of the North Atlantic, it catches birds that have been knocked off course by weather systems and fierce winds, from both eastern and western flyways. When they finally spot land, they take what they can get: the fish-drying racks of Garður on the Reykjanes Peninsula, or the pastry-crumb pavements of Lækjartorg in downtown Reykjavík.
“As the crowd gathered on Arnarhóll, the Cowbird vanished into the throng, merging with the chants of thousands.”
A lone female Brown-Headed Cowbird found herself on Austurstræti at precisely 12:51 PM on October 24 — timed, somehow, with the Women’s Strike. This North American brood parasite, not exactly beloved back home, had almost certainly been swept east by westward winds.
As the crowd swelled on Arnarhóll, the Cowbird disappeared into the mass of people and their chanting. Birders had little choice but to join the scene. She was later picked up again by a sharp-eyed birder on Ingólfsstræti, sitting quite contentedly among local starlings.
By sunset, a small knot of birders — tired, a bit hoarse — were pressed against a white fence opposite a local deli, craning their necks for a decent angle. Curious passersby stopped to peer through the binoculars. One remarked, deadpan: “Men will do anything but go to therapy.”
Post-Twitch Stress Disorder
People often ask whether it’s more of a rush to chase a bird someone else has found or to stumble across one yourself — twitching versus discovering. The honest answer is that nothing quite matches the moment when you’re alone in a field, pulse climbing, trying to work out if what you’re looking at is genuinely rare.
The binoculars fog up. The camera stutters. Your hand shakes like a caffeine-fuelled snipe. Did it have a white rump? Was that call a sharp “tzeet” or a soft, throaty “prrreet”? It’s exhilarating, baffling, and a little sweaty, all at once.
Still, the reality is simple: you see fewer birds going it alone. Given the choice between chasing a confirmed rarity and wandering hopefully through empty hedges, I’ll almost always take the chase. Dinner plans, emails, doctor’s appointments, exhibition openings — they’ll all still be there.
In a pursuit where years can pass between certain sightings, missing a rare bird generates a very particular kind of dread. A nemesis bird — one that keeps giving you the slip — is genuinely maddening. In Norway, I dipped on a presumed American Herring Gull three times in a row: three full-day trips, a shredded bread budget, and a bad back. Among fellow hardcore birders, that’s classified as mild post-twitch stress disorder, told with a sympathetic chuckle.
The Language of Birds
What drives it — whether you’re a twitcher, a finder, or somewhere between — is hard to pin down neatly. For some it’s the uncertainty of chasing something alive, something that might fly off, get hit by a car, or be taken by a cat before you arrive. I say that from experience. Others would trace it back to something more primal, a hunting instinct redirected. Some people look at their list and see what’s missing; others see what they’ve got. A few will admit, with a grin, that they simply haven’t found better things to do. For most, though, it’s the sense of community — the sharing, the celebration, the mutual investment in each other’s sightings.
Discoverer becomes twitcher and back again.
This world pulled me into the rhythm of “daginns,” of Flækingsfuglavakt notifications rattling the phone at odd hours, and into a genuine friendship with people I’d never have met otherwise. As someone who came to Iceland from outside, there’s no faster way to learn a language than standing beside a group of passionate birders trading quick words in Icelandic about a small brown bird sitting in a green hedgerow — all of you looking at exactly the same thing. My first Icelandic words were prepositions, and that tells you everything.
So if you spot a small group standing in the rain, peering through expensive binoculars at a bush, come over and say hello. We’re fine, genuinely. We’re out here living it — chasing the rare and windblown vagrants of the North Atlantic — and we have no shortage of stories from the autumn of ’25.
