It sometimes takes a while to realize who paid us a visit. One guest who flew to Iceland in October of 2012 has only now been identified. The guest in question needed no airport, but flew here all the way from Asia.
It was biologist Yann Kolbeinsson who finally realized last week what a rare visit we had been paid, when the guest spent five days in Höfn, Hornafjörður, Southeast Iceland. His research revealed that the visitor was no other than a dark-sided flycatcher (also known as Siberian flycatcher or muscicapa sibirica), a bird never before seen in Europe and rare, even, in North America, where it has only been seen a few times in Alaska and once in the Bermudas.Those are the only reported sightings of the bird outside Asia.
The Southeast Iceland Bird Watchers’ Association posted the discovery on its Facebook page January 19.
