Three Great Days

The last three days having been shockingly good!!

All you need is some rain and then the wind to change to southerly and boom.

Fridat started naturally in Maridalen where 19 Temminck’s are yet another record but stubbornly refuse to attract any other calidris to join them. On Thursday though I finally had Greenshank there and 4 Golden Plovers so this springs wader list is very respectable and on Saturday 4 Redshank also dropped in. A short visit to Østensjøvannet gave lots of feeding hirundines in the cold northerly wind which was nice to see after a couple of years where an insect absence has meant there has hardly been any there. House Martins were the scarcest and I am worried about this species. Black-headed Gulls continue to suffer and I could see just 2 nests still occupied. Highlight was a pair of Garganey found by Jack the day before and excitingly their behaviour suggested to me they will try to nest.

After this I announced to anyone who wanted to listen that I was off to Nordre Øyeren to find a Broad-billed Sandpiper and that turned out to be a good prediction😊. I stopped first at Merkja where the american Green-winged Teal is back and a good selection of waders included 18 Temminck’s (still beaten by Maridalen). Svellet again had absolutely no waders but it was Årnestangen where the excitment was. A Bar-headed Goose on the walk out was a tickable piece of category C plastic after the Norwegian records committee has recently «upgraded» it from pure plastic category E.

The real action was to be had at the end though where an initial sweep of the dry mud flats revealed nothing… but a second sweep showed a wader walking around the corner from an unviewable bit of shoreline. Eventually a few others joined and they turned out to be 4 species with a Broad-billed headlining, 11 Sanderling being a very high spring count and 2 each of Dunlin and Ringed Plover being more expected.

But that was only the beginning of the day! In the evening I was guiding to GG Owls. This allowed me to take in a Caspian Tern at Hamar and then the owls completely outdid themselves with the male bringing 3 voles in the course of just an hour which mum fed to three hungry chicks. Happy days!!

So, after such a long day I could be forgiven a little lie in yesterday morning on what had all the hallmarks of being THE day this spring with rain and strong southerly winds forecast. I decided to allow others the joy of walking out to Årnestangen and instead went first to Maridalen where 19 Temminck’s were still present and now even displaying and 3 Greenshank and 4 Redshank were new. I reckoned it was sea gazing that was the best option today and positioned myself at Halden Brygge, Fornebu from 10:30 where a kiosk provides great shelter when it blows from the south. A flock of 30 Oystercatcher heading north as I got out of the car was a promising sign and then a minute later the sight of a flock of 21 Kittiwake was a sure sign that birds were moving. This flock headed north over the city and then a bit later a new flock of 23 came from the south and eventually landed on the water. Red-throated Divers were moving high up with 141 in total and I grilled every tern I saw with all being local Common Terns until suddenly the closest tern of the day turned out to be a Sandwich. This was big - finally after 24 years by far my biggest bogey bird in Norway had fallen😊 and I even got photos. It was heading south and as I watched it a large flock of Brent Geese came into view heading north!! It was all a bit too much. These were pale-bellied birds which usually fly up the west coast of Norway on their way to Svalbard but occasionally take a wrong turn and head up the east coast. They were obviously very confused and eventually turned around and headed south again. After this there were some smaller flocks including one which did head north and I last saw it heading over Maridalen.

Today has been a wet day but I have of course been out. In Maridalen rising water levels and a night with no rain had caused all but 3 of the Temminck’s to move. The fjord didn’t seem to have any interesting birds with the wind having turned easterly and rain making visibility bad. So Nordre Øyeren beckoned. I chose not to walk out to Årnestangen after Svellet only had 8 Temmincks to offer but Merkja had the goods with 2 Mountain Marsh Runners having already been found and feeding alongside Dunlin and Temmincks with the Green-winged Teal also still present and showing well😊

Here are videos and pictures of everything bar the GGO which I will have to come back to.

finally - Sandwich Tern (splitterne)!! and I found it myself :-) 

sea gazing from Halden Brygge

confused Brent Geese (ringgås) over Oslo

here we see they are the Pale-bellied subspecies

I have not counted but reckon they are around 300

Kittiwakes (krykkje)

female Garganey (knekkand) giving unusually good views

male

Caspian Tern (rovterne)

these are probably my best views in Norway much better than the Svellet experience

Bar-headed Goose (stripegås) with Canada Geese and a Canada x Greylag hybrid

a Dunline (myrsnipe) and Broad-billed Sandpiper (fjellmyrløper) - trust me!

Sanderlings (sandløper)

Green-wnged Teal (amerikakrikkand) with normal Teal

quite a collection of birds at Merkja

a male Ruff (brushane) with 4 other wader species

Temminck's Stints 

the Broad-billed Sandpipers at Merkja were much close than at Årnestangen but I still failed to get good photos

2 Mountain Marsh Runners with a Temminck

Dunlin and Temmincks

Green-winged Teal

Head scratching

When I make statements that spring migrations is over that is of course not correct and we are now in the period, right at the end of the season, where the most exciting birds can turn up.

I was quite sure I heard a Serin in Maridalen on Tuesday but it was too brief to be sure and it is only now that the “proper” nocturnal singer season begins as the vegetation become high enough to hide, and support, the high summer birds. There are unfortunately few signs that this year will be very productive at night with next to no records so far in SE Norway of species like Corncrake, Quail, Spotted Crake, Grasshopper, River or Blyth’s Reed Warblers. And a trip into Maridalen with Jack last night revealed just a single Marsh Warbler with no joy with the Nightjars either.

Tomorrow, I am off with Conor to the cabin in Valdres for third time and Jack will be joining us. Whilst we are enjoying mountain birds galore I am sure that Oslo will experience a rush of rares!

Yesterday I added Oslo #183 to my list with a successful twitch to see 10 Dark-bellied Brent Geese that have been in the fjord for a couple of days and I can only hope that any other attempted Oslo twitches this year will go so smoothly (as failed twitches quickly put me off the idea for a long time).

 

Dark-bellied Brent Geese (ringgås)

Birding wise, Maridalen has revealed more surprises, head scratching and joy on the Lapwing front. The two (re)nesting pairs are still safely on their nests and have survived thunderstorms and huge amounts of rain. Lots of gulls feeding in the fields and which could take the eggs are kept at a distance by the ever vigilant males so by around 20 June we should have young although by then the crop will have grown so high that it will probably not be possible to see them anymore. The real surprise though which still has me scratching my head came on the other, original field where I had seen a brood of 4 recently hatched young on 23 May. I did not see them again until 28 May when an adult was accompanied by 2 young so it looked like 2 had been lost. But yesterday, 29 May, it was all very confusing. There were 4 adults on the field, seemingly 2 pairs about 200m from each other. I also saw that there was a youngster with each “pair” and then after a long time managed to see that there were actually 2 young with each pair. All the young looked to be about a week old and that leaves me with some questions I suspect I will never get an answer to.

Is there now a fourth breeding pair that has nestedsuccessfully without me having any clue?

Or, has the original brood of 4 somehow been split in two and possibly been adopted by another pair?

The two sets of young remained separate in both the morning and afternoon so it was not just a temporary split.

Lapwing (vipe) family #1

 

young look to be about a week old

family 2

young here also look about the same age

nest 1

nest 2

The Whooper Swans are still on “their” nest but if it is the Mute Swan eggs that they (although I think it is only the female that has been on the nest) are incubating then they should be hatching any day soon as I first saw the Mutes on the nest 22 April and the incubation period is around 36 days.

The Hobbies have disappeared again although I did discover the Hooded Crows nest that had clearly attracted them to the site where they were on Monday and Tuesday. They should be laying eggs any day soon so I hope I find their chosen site.

At a Black Woodpecker nest that I have not spent much time observing this year (although I hear them a lot) I was aware that the first youngster left the nest on 24 May. It was therefore very surprising to see another youngster still in the nest yesterday, 5 days later. The male was calling constantly from a nearby tree in attempt to lure it out but without success whilst we were there. Owls and raptors usually have a wide range of ages for their young as they start incubating from the first egg but I thought woodpeckers only started incubating once the whole clutch was laid so for there to be such a difference in development of the young is unusual unless this last youngster is in some way injured and unable to leave the nest.

Black Woodpecker (svartspett) young

dad

here calling to get to get Jr out of the nest

Bugs are of course causing me to look down and I had a new and long awaited species with a Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk Moth (smalkantet humlesvermer). I found it originally in constant movement and could not see which of the two similar species it was (Broad-bordered is commoner and one I have seen before) but when a cloud covered the sun it immediately started nectaring and I was able to see it well and get photos. I have previously seen either Narrow or Broad-bordered buzzing past me in Maridalen but this is the first time I have been able to identify one to species.

Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk Moth (smalkantet humlesvermer)

a male Orange Tip (aurorasommerfugl)

and my first Heath Fritillary (marimjellerutevinge) of the year

there are a lot of cats in Maridalen and they undoubtedly take a lot of birds although this one will be viewed favourably by most people as it has "only" taken a rodent