Værøy 2023 Day 3

Day 3 was also a bit of a disappointment despite decent weather and lots of time in the field. There were precious few signs of new arrivals today although finally seeing Arctic Redpoll which have been around for a while was good. A (the?) Hawk Owl which soared around over a hill top like a Sparrowhawk was a new experience for me and I heard but didn’t see a Yellow-browed Warbler. Three Swallows were new and I failed to see a Barred Warbler which was probably a bird that has been here dor a while.

Bird of the day though was yesterdays Richard’s Pipit which was present in exactly the same area today and despite lots of identical habitat all over the island showed no intentions of moving away from a very a small area. This meant it was quite easy to get close to the bird and really enjoy a species that normally behaves very differently. I have taken far too many pictures of the Dick and these are the ones that I quickly chose but there may well be better ones so don’t be surprised if there comes an iadditional Dick Pip Pic post next week.

Richard’s Pipit (tartarpiplerke) as you would maybe hope to see one

Spot it?

Arctic Redpoll (polarsisik)

3 Arctics

High flying Hawk Owl

This Hooded Crow and its mate followed me around for a while

Værøy 2023 Day 2

Today was the day we had all been looking forward to. The strong winds were forecast to stop and we had optimistically interpreted that the weather systems would bring us birds from far further east.

Leaving the house at dawn there was indeed no wind (it was completely still) and there were a lot of birds in the air: thrushes, finches and pipits. It was great to experience but were there any scarce or rare birds among them?.As time wore on it became increasingly clear the answer was no. We found no new warblers and there were very few birds on the deck.

A very high flying Short-eared Owl was good enough but after that I had to make do with Jack Snipe hunting and of 11 birds I found 3 were of birds on the deck and of course I rather over did the photo taking😊

We all started getting a bit despondent and ended up going back to the area around our house. Luckily Kjell saved the day for everyone with a Richard’s Pipit. This is a species that has p become rare in Norway and this was only the second in the country this year. It was also the most cooperative bird of the species i have ever seen and I managed my first ever non flight photos. It was not particularly large and we used some time to convince ourselves it wasn’t a Blyths but once it called we were happy with it being a Dick’s.

Richard’s Pipit (tartarpiplerke)

Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin)

Can you find it?

A late Whinchat (buskskvett)

Otter

Sanderling (sandløper)

Birding at 7am

Dunlin (myrsnipe)

Barnacle Geese (hvitkinngås)

young Long-tailed Duck (havelle)

Short-eared Owl (jordugle)

I thought the Otter was going for the duck but the duck wasn’t concerned

Parrot Crossbill (furukorsnebb)

Kjell showing me where the Whinchat was 😊

Golden Plover (heilo)