I actually get Snow Buntings in front of my lens here in the Netherlands pretty much every year. Lovely little birds to photograph, although here they are, of course, always in winter plumage. Which is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. I’ve only seen them in breeding plumage once, in Iceland. Anyway, when we were recently in the mountains of Norway, I had my sights set on photographing a Snow Bunting in breeding plumage. They were supposed to occur in the highest parts of the area where we were staying. So we planned a hike to the highest point in the region: Gaustatoppen. You can take a little train through the mountain to get there, but come on, walking for a few hours is obviously more fun. Who knows, you might even come across something interesting along the way. In our case, we came across absolutely nothing — at least as far as birds were concerned. A few rocks and some moss. Nice too, but still. Anyway, when we reached the ‘top’, there were people, but no buntings. After we’d had something to eat and drink, a male Snow Bunting suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Nice. Only… it was a slightly scruffy-looking specimen. But, as they say, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so I enthusiastically started taking pictures. The bird wasn’t shy at all and calmly foraged around on the concrete structure. Fortunately, it also perched on some rocks for a while, before disappearing again. We’d made it to the top and got what we came for. Just to be sure, we waited a little longer though in case any other birds or individuals might turn up, but it remained just this one bunting. During the descent we saw two Common Swifts, but apart from that, the entire mountain seemed to be completely devoid of life. Strange, but there you go.