Up at 5am we headed for Valdresflye hoping to
experience displaying waders and with luck Long-tailed Skuas. I always hope for
snow here as this means the birds are concentrated on the few areas of bare
ground but this year there was far too much snow and few birds were back with
the side of the road attracting most of them so at least views were good. We
had Dunlin, Ringed Plovers and Temminck’s Stints in display flights but no
Golden Plover and most disappointingly no Dotterel. There was not a sign of
Lemmings so a lack of Long-tailed Skuas and no raptors of any kind was not a
surprise but yet again a disappointment. Given the amount of snow there were a
surprising number of insect eating passerines with many Wheatears, Meadow
Pipits and a few White Wagtails. Shore Larks were also back and some were
singing.
The snow line was at around 1000m and the large lake
of Vinstre was frozen except for a small area at the western end. A lot of duck
were concentrated here with around 50 Tufted Duck and most impressively 23
Long-tailed Duck. This is, as far as I can see, a record count in this area. 12
birds were in a flock and were passionately displaying whilst the other birds
were mostly already paired but these also were calling at times. 7 Velvet and 2
Common Scoter are always good to see on their mountain breeding grounds but no
Scaup was a worrying sign. We also didn’t find any Lapland Buntings and both of
these species are in serious decline in southern Norway.
I had hoped for a lot of waders on the sandbanks in
the lake but there were just a few of
the same species we had seen earlier on Valdresflye. A pair of Arctic Terns seemed
a bit lost, a Short-eared Owl was hunting but without success and a
Rough-legged Buzzard just flew quickly over.
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| male Long-tailed Duck (havelle) in summer plumage which I think is far drabber than their winter plumage |
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| with Tufted Ducks (toppand) |
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| Shore Larks (fjellerke) on the road |
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| and in the snow |
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| male Snow Bunting (snøspurv), a montage of the same bird |
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| Temminck's Stint |
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| the only Rough-legged Buzzard (fjellvåk) of the trip |
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and the only Short-eared Owl (jordugle)
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| male Teal (krikkand) |
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| male Wheatear (steinskvett) |
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| Wood Sandpiper (grønnstilk) |
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| with a Meadow Pipit (heipiplerke) |