Sunday driving & twitching

A new Sunday tradition may be in the making with it becoming twitching Sunday in which Jr gets to practice her driving by driving me to a rare bird. The most important thing to make this into a tradition now is that rare birds continue to found on Sunday mornings… That did indeed happen yesterday (following on from the Cattle Egret last week) with the Baikal Teal being refound 13 days after it was discovered and it was reported to have come a long was out of eclipse plumage so sounded like it would be worth seeing again. Since I saw it last I have had it in mind when visiting Nordre Øyeren and Østensjøvannet and it was in Nordre Øyeren that it was refound. Not amongst flocks of shy Teal or Wigeon but amongst Mallards (again) although in its favour there were also Shoveler, Pintail, Wigeon and Teal associating with the same Mallards. It truly looked like a male Baikal Teal now although may need another two weeks to lose all traces of the eclipse plumage. Hopefully it will hang around for a bit although winter arrived in force today and my attempts to see it again were hampered by a blizzard.

I checked up on both the Wheatear and Tree Pipit yesterday morning and both were going strong despie it being -1C but the blizzard today seemed to have put an end to the Tree Pipit in Maridalen although it may just have been clever enough to hide away somewhere. The terrible weather will continue tomorrow but Wednesday should allow me to have a better search for it. Best bird in Maridalen was an Arctic Redpoll with a 100 strong flock of Common Redpolls (there was also at least 1 Lesser Redpoll amongst them) but rarest bird was House Sparrow with a pair amongst a 100 strong flock of Tree Sparrows. Have they been here all the time since I first saw some in August?). The sparrows were curiously finding something to eat in the snow on the road. I have no idea what it was and the road had not been salted so it was not that they were looking for. I have also put up some fat balls in the hope of attracting the female Grey-headed Woodpecker that has been seen a handful of times over the last week although not by me yet.

the Baikal Teal (gulkinnand) was a bit too distant to see well but using the bazooka with 600m lens and 10x digital zoom it was OK to film it

this is a screen grab from the video, and here is the video:

Today's Arctic Redpoll (polarsisik) - not often I see them in Oslo and even rarer in Maridalen

a Goshawk (hønsehauk) in the snow

Tree Sparrows (pilfink) finding nutrition in the snow on the road in Maridalen and there were 2 locally rare House Sparrows (gråspurv) with them

Tree Sparrows

there were also a few Yellowhammers (gulspurv) in the Dale. Could this be the winter to find something rarer amongst them?

The Tree Pipit (trepiplerke) on Sunday when it did look less energetic than the previous days

and its preferred area today when surprisingly enough I did not find it

The Wheatear (steinskvett) on Sunday. I reckon this bird will survive the snow a little bit longer than the pipit but did not look for it today

the Wheatear seemed curious about a Wren (gjerdesmett) that flew in

and the Wren was equally curious about the Wheatear. Both are insect eaters but the Wren searches in places the Wheatear doesn't or couldn't which may explain why it has evolved to stay in Oslo for the winter

Baikal Teal

Baikal Teal is a popular species, popular with birders and popular with keepers of wildfowl. It is both rare and beautiful and quite a plastic bird. It only received the most minimal of entries in Birds of the Western Palearctic with no picture or description and just a brief text with the following summing up how it was viewed “but origins of a good many suspect since species commonly kept in waterfowl collections”. But a bird shot in Denmark in 2005 was, through the application of the dark art of isotope analysis, found to have come from the breeding grounds in Siberia and this then prompted a British specimen from 1906 to be similarly analysed  and this was also judged to be a genuine vagrant. Since then the flood gates have opened and records of this bird in Northern Europe (including reassessed historic ones) now usually get the nod unless there are obvious signs of it being a fence hopper (plastic rings).

Many of the birds though do exhibit behavioural traits that suggest a more local origin though and the species is kept in Norway in private collections with the birds unringed and fully winged.

A male turned up in western Norway for a day last December, seen at close range one could wonder where it had come from but what was assumed to be the same bird was then refound in the same area in February where it gave the impression of being far warier but that could also be explained by the nature of the site it had chosen. What has widely been assumed to be the same bird (but why?) then turned up in southeastern Norway in April and to my mind did not act like a very wild bird but was very popular. What does reasonably seem to be the same bird was then tracked moving northwards in Norway being seen at 3 different sites with the last being the rarity magnet island of Røst at the end of May and where again it showed at very close range. As the bird(s) was unringed though it sits safely on people lists although I didn’t find myself tempted to travel the couple of hours needed to see it.

Yesterday news came through of female plumaged Baikal Teal very close to Oslo. The lake is urban and not a known site for dabbling ducks other than Mallard but does attract rare gulls. It also has a history with plastic ducks with a series of bread eating Mandarins and also a White-cheeked Pintail. Pictures of the bird showed it to be unringed and full winged, i.e good as gold so I made the 20 minutes journey through the rush hour traffic and found it being watched by a handful of birders. It was perhaps warier than the Mallards it was with but it was no problem getting close to. Whilst watching it I thought it was an adult female but on checking my pictures and available literature and online resources I think it has to be an adult male in eclipse plumage due to some long scapulars and a few grey feathers on the flanks. I had expected that by this late date it would have more obvious signs of being a male but clearly not. It being an adult male raises the distinct possibility of it being the bird from the spring or could be a recent escape but it will not be a bird that has arrived from distant breeding grounds this autumn.

Finding and identifying a Baikal Teal in female plumage is no mean feat so congratulations to the finder Geir Høen and let us hope it hangs around long enough so show the plumage that makes it such a popular duck.

Baikal Teal (gulkinnand). In female plumage the white spot by the bill is a key character. The long scapular and warm plumage point to this being a male in eclipse plumage. From what I can make out the pattern of the feathering on the chest is also indicative of a male in eclipse rather than a female

in addition the grey feathers coming through on the flanks point to it being a mle

it is missing quite a few feathers through moult such that the speculum is very visible

I found the pattern of the two feathers under the tail to be quite unique

the red, green, black and white patterning of the speculum is also species specific

I would like to think that I wouls spot a bird like this amongst a large flock of Teal even if at some range