Footprints on the Hvalnes beach, Iceland

Hvalnes is a small peninsula with a black pebble beach that stretches on for a few kilometers. Sitting on its tip is a picturesque old, yellow lighthouse and an old turf farm with the same name of Hvalnes. The beach stretches for a few kilometers and would make a nice walk or you can just hang out on the beach and enjoy the view. It is an excellent location for bird watching and photography.

From Hvalnes you can walk down to the beach and a nature reserve, with unusual species such as oyster plant, whose bright blue flowers and grey leathery leaves grow among the pebbles.

Large numbers of non-breeding whooper swans sometimes congregate in the lagoons of adjacent Lonsfjordur and Alftafjordur, the next fjord to the north. Iceland hosts an important breeding population of these swans, who migrate to the British Isles for the winter.

Whooper swans pair for life, and their cygnets stay with them all winter. Their preferred breeding habitat is a wetland and in Iceland, they seek out undisturbed inland lakes as breeding sites.

Both the male and female help build the nest, and the male will guard the nest while the female incubates. The female will usually lay 4–7 eggs and the cygnets hatch after about 36 days.

The cygnets are fledged at 120 to 150 days.
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