The Spoonbill sandpiper, as described by the IUCN, 'has a very specialized breeding habitat, using only lagoon spits with crowberry-lichen vegetation or
dwarf birch and willow sedges, together with adjacent estuary or mudflat habitats that are used as feeding sites by adults during nesting.
Other dominant FT zone species include Arctic
dwarf birch (Betula glandulosa), northern bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), Labrador tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum), and black crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), with the seedbed composed of patchy lichens and feathermosses (Cranston and Hermanutz, 2013).
Shortly after leaving camp, I spotted three bulls a mile upriver in the
dwarf birch just off the riverbank.
Tree and shrub cover have increased in the Abisko Valley from 1970 to 2010, mostly for mountain and
dwarf birch (Betula nana); willow response has been inconsistent (Rundqvist et al.
The presence of
dwarf birch seems natural because it occurs also in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Plants boosted by the restoration work include one of England's rarest trees - the bonsai-like
dwarf birch, usually found in much colder climates.
On some of the peaks, like Algonquin, there are dense "stands" of pencil-thin
dwarf birch trees--too small to core--that scientists estimate to be at least 70 years old.
To cut a long story short, I found my own grumpy ptarmigans feeding on
dwarf birch and juniper on a vertiginous scree slope, and plenty of snow buntings to boot, but I also managed to get lost in the dense fog and wild blizzard that blew up from nowhere.
Inland are the high reindeer tundras of
dwarf birch which form a large Sami heartland cross-cut by the national boundaries of Sweden, Finland, and Russia.
SILVER BIRCH includes three species which are true natives - the common silver birch (Betula pendula), the Hairy Birch (Betula pubescens), almost identical to the silver birch, and the
dwarf birch (B.
The blueberries and cranberries ripen, and together with the
dwarf birch and the willows, their leaves turn a flaming red and yellow.
Open areas in the spruce woodland or forest were likely occupied by shrubs and herbs such as
dwarf birch, ground juniper, willow, ericads such as Vaccinium uliginosum, Empetrum, and Arctostaphylos, and sedge.
