The mountains - Valdres

We have had another long weekend and with good weather forecast on Saturday I decided to head to the mountains on Friday evening. Normally I would have had a boyz weekend in the mountains around this time but circumstances have conspired to mean that wouldn’t happen this year so I rather spur of the moment packed a sleeping bag in the car and headed off on my own. In the end I was out for 27 hours and had 2 hours of sleep, 30 minutes of which was a rather necessary power nap on the way home…

I surprised myself with how much energy I had although on the way home I was counting down the kilometres.

After 3 and a half hours driving I started the birding at my Great Snipe lek. After a blank last year I was hoping that was just a bit of bad luck but there were no birds again this year and I now reckon the lek has been abandoned. Why is more difficult to answer. It is close to a path and a ski lift but has always been so and I cannot see any changes in the immediate area that would affect the birds. The Beitostølen area has seen lots and lots of building of cabins but the lek is above the cabins, perhaps though the nesting females have always used areas that are now being developed and the general area is no longer attractive for them. Alternatively the species itself is suffering a significant decline due to factors in winter and passage areas and this has causes some leks to disappear as the birds concentrate in core areas. These are my maximum counts at the lek since I discovered it in 2012 and the downward trend is obvious:

the (former) lek site

 There were very few birds around the lek otherwise and the vegetation was still very brown. There was little snow and only lakes above 1300m had ice but I think this is from a warm period 2-3 weeks ago but since then it has been cold and windy so vegetation has not yet started developing.

I drove a long stretch of road during the night with frequent stops hoping to find Great Snipe other places but did not succeed. There was a lot of other life though. Between midnight and 1am I was surprised by how much activity there was from other waders and grouse and also a Short-eared Owl that perched in my headlights.

I had my hour and half sleep in the car and awoke at 3:30am to lots of noise. All manner of birds were singing and displaying and over the next 6 hours I feasted my eyes on Dotterels, Temminck’s Stints, Shore Larks, Lapland and Snow Buntings, Bluethroats, Long-tailed Ducks, Scaup, Common and Velvet Scoters and more. It is clearly not a rodent year in this area and aswell as no Long-tailed Skuas I just had a single Rough-legged Buzzard, another Short-eared Owl, 2 Kestrels, a Golden Eagle and a White-tailed Eagle.

 

After this as the sun warmed things up I concentrated on butterflies  and I took a slight detour to visit a site of the rare Large Grizzled Skipped (alvesmyger). I did at the time think I had found them but my pictures show I saw, or at least the ones I managed to photograph, were ordinary Grizzled Skippers which I didn’t realise occurred there. Their large cousins do fly later and the end of June is the time most people see them so I will have to try again later… I did have another good species but none were new for me so I am a bit disappointed but will I hope have a butterfly post soon.

Dotterel (boltit)

it was only displaying females that I saw but they were very active

Golden Eagle (kongeørn) and a mountain

I heard quite a few (although not lots of) Bluethroats (blåstrupe) but saw none at close range

I only had Lapland Buntings (lappspurv) at one site but 5! males were singing and song flighting within 100m of each other

a Ptarmigan (fjellrype) at 11pm

male Shore Lark (fjellerke)

and his mate

one of the two Short-eared Owls (jordugle) I saw

Snow Buntings (snøspurv) were unusually numerous this year

male

female

03:39 at my hotel

my now favoured raptor watch point was a bit disappointing this year with just 4 birds of 4 species: Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle, Rough-legged Buzzard and Kestrel

A quiet period

We are into the most exciting time of the year in the Oslo area but it can also be the most frustrating and disappointing if the weather does not play ball. Sunny days with northerly winds can feel birdless whereas southerly winds and some rain can produce great arrivals of all sorts of feathered fancies.

We are of course in a sunny, northerly wind period….

But if one is prepared to leave Maridalen and even Oslo and participate in twitching lite then there are of course good birds to be seen.

I visited Hellesjøvannet again on Wednesday and with the knowledge I had learned over the course of 5 hours the day before I felt confident that I would be able to get more than a glimpse of the Bittern. I stood in the same place as the day before and waited and waited for two whole hours without hearing a single boom. I knew that the bird had been heard earlier in the morning and after the two hours during which I had ascertained that there were 2 pairs of Marsh Harriers breeding and an additional female who seemed to be wanting to get the attention of one of the males (polygamy is fairly regular) I decided to drive to the southern end of the lake where I could see there were a couple of birders. I asked them if they had heard the bird during the previous two hours to which the answer was no and then straight away it boomed….. from where I had been standing. Returning there pronto it then proceeded to boom in total 9 times during the course of only 58 minutes! It was however a little further away than the previous day and seeing it proved to be a fruitless exercise.

I have paid a couple of visits to Nordre Øyeren with my first trip of the year out to the tip of Årnestangen and of course visits to Svellet. Water levels continued to rise quickly until 22 April with rises of over 20cm a day but since then it has fallen it has fallen by 15cm over the course of 3 days. Currently it looks absolutely bloody fantastic baby, a wader heaven but yesterday I did not see a single wader there. The reason for this is probably two fold: the weather has not been conducive to an arrival of waders and secondly the shallow water is currently (due to the previous rapid rise in water levels) covering mud that has been bone dry for months and is therefore free of any invertebrate food. Should we have a period now of warm weather and gradually falling water levels we should though end up with fantastic conditions for waders with food rich areas of mud gradually being reexposed over the next 3 weeks. I am allowed to be optimistic 😉

view over Svellet on 25 April. Lots of mud and lots of shallow water. Fingers crossed for the next 3 weeks 🤞

 

rapidly rising water levels until 22 April

and gradually falling since.

Årnestangen gave me good views of a female Lapland Bunting and a male Hen Harrier (although rather selfishly I was disappointed it wasn’t a Pallid).

Yesterday, I went to Maridalen’s eastern sister valley, Nittedal to see a Great White Egret that has been there for a few days and enjoyed good views of it perched in trees by a lake and heronry. Another trip to Årnestangen after this gave me long range views of a male Stonechat. This is, I believe the same bird that was found on 13 March and which I then saw the subsequent day. Since then there have been occasional records of a male in the area and given how good the bird has been at disappearing both times I have seen it and that it was singing yesterday I reckon we are talking about a territorial male that has perhaps wandered around a bit in his search for a mate. I have also seen Kingfisher both visits to Årnestangen and firsts for the year have been numerous with Wood Sand, Whimbrel and Yellow Wagtail noted.

Maridalen doesn’t get forgotten completely and there has clearly been ducks moving through with good numbers of Teal aswell as Common Scoter, Red-breasted Merganser, Pintail, Wigeon and Tufted Duck.

I will start though with a video of Monday's Great Grey Owl nest

male Hen Harrier (myrhauk). My first of the year and never a species I see often but I was still annoyed it wasn't a Pallid (steppehauk)

Kingfisher (isfugl) is now an annual breeder in Nordre Øyeren with probably multiple pairs although they are recorded surprisingly infrequently

female Lapland Bunting (lappspurv)

and here you can hear it calling which is how I discovered it

a (Lesser) Redpoll. It was singing so is I presume a male but completely lacks red/pink on on the chest

Marsh Harrier (sivhauk) pair

and here the male displaying which I think was for the benefit of the additional female that was in the area

Great (White) Egret (egretthegre) and Grey Heron (gråhegre). Lack of plumes means this is an immature bird but they will surely be breeding here soon

they are remarkably acrobatic in flight

and like Grey Herons are quite at home in trees

this Hooded Crow caused the egret to fly off

the Stonechat (svartstrupe) was always quite distant

but up to 7 (all male) early Whinchats (buskskvett) showed much better

and something for a later posting