The big lull

It’s been a long while since my last post and it has been an infuriating time but I’m sure I’ve written something similar many times before at this time of the year. We have entered what a lull with sunny, dry weather meaning no meaningful arrivals of birds and also difficult viewing conditions especially at Årnestangen and Svellet where long distances and hear haze become a real issue.

It is spring though and of course new birds are arriving but it is a trickle and there is no volume of birds. Slavonian Grebes have made their annual visit to Maridalsvannet, a visit that seems to come earlier and earlier each year. Other species that have arrived early are Wryneck, Pied Flycatcher, House Martin and Willow Warbler but raptor migration is still a dream despite me trying from a variety of places – I have yet to see a Hen Harrier let alone a Pallid..

I have just had two good days of guiding with Margie and Greg from Wisconsin where we racked up 85 species with Wryneck, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Ring Ouzel and Rough-legged Buzzard amongst them. Despite us starting the day early it became quite hard going after around noon with the sunny weather causing a real decline in activity. This sunny weather is forecast for at least the next 10 days so I fear that the magical Svellet spring that I was predicting may already be unlikely. The day we do get some rain though could end up being one of those days though.

 

After guiding and drop off at the airport I continued north for an evening in owl land. I twitched a Great White Egret on the way which I actually managed to see from the motorway at 110km/h but did also stop to admire a bit better.

Owls are a mixed picture. Ural Owls are giving me my best ever joy with the species with two nest boxes that I have checked now being occupied - this amounts to nearly 10% of the known Norwegian population!

Great Grey Owl though is a different story. I again visited the two nests from last year and found no birds by the natural nest. By the platform the female was still present but not on eggs. She is a strange one though and gave herself away by bill clicking when I was still close to 50m away and had not yet seen her. She is clearly territorial. 

 

One person who knows a lot more about owls than me reckons it is just still early in the season and that birds will nest and lay eggs whereas another reckons the rodent population has collapsed. Time will tell but unless they lay eggs in the next week or two it will be too late. In the Facebook group Ugler i Norden there are updates from a platform that has a camera watching over it. Here birds were first seen coming to the platform already 22 Feb and mating was observed from 7 April but the first, and so far only?, egg was not laid until 2 months later on 21 April. This to me suggests a pair who want to breed but are finding the food situation very borderline.

When in the forests a roadside female Capercaille was a treat and I continue with my tree scratching whenever I see a suitable hole. This time I did get a bird but and a Stock Dove was very unexpected given where I was but why oh why couldn’t it have been a Tengmalm’s?

Six Slav Grebes (horndykker) on Maridalsvannet - an Oslo record count!

a single bird two days later may well have been in addition to the six

Two Ring Ouzels (ringtrost) - it always feel like a big relief when I see these in the spring as it is a species I never feel guaranteed to see in Oslo (but do)

female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (dvergspett) whilst guiding. This bird was making a lot of noise and was I reckon unpaired and getting desperate

my first Wryneck (vendehals) of the year and another good bird to see whilst guiding

a great looking old Black Woodpecker hole that I was sure would reveal a Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle) but instead and for me very surprisingly revealed a Stock Dove (skogdue). At least my tree scratching skills seem to be OK now.

roadside female Caper (storfugl)

Great White Egret (egretthegre)

Great Grey Owl (lappugle) - the same bird as in my previous owl post

Ural Owl (slagugle) - also the same bird as in my last owl post

but he she is with her mate (on the left). I have rarely encountered the male at a nest site and then they are normally much shyer than this bird seemed to be. He flew in after the female called and maybe felt he had a job to do

and Ural Owl nest #2. This box is old and the bottom starting to fall out perhaps suggesting that whoever put it up no longer checks it and I hope it survives the season

Maridalsvannet on Monday morning. Lovely weather but no many birds

a very long, straight road in Hedmark's deep forests

A pair of Ringed Plover (sandlo) is clinging on at Fornebu and here, and in the video, the male is creating nest scrapes for the females approval. The area they were doing it in was very close to paths and roads so I suspect they will struggle.

I finally managed to read the rings on the Mute Swan (knoppsvane) pair that is visiting Maridalsvannet this spring. Surprisingly they are not the same pair that bred last year which have established themselves at Fornebu now. This pair have  been seen together since March 2025 when they were at Østensjøvannet but did not breed . The female P576 was ringed as an adult in 28km away in March 2017 so is a mature lady. She bred in 2022 with another mate but did not raise young whilst the male was ringed as a juvenile in November 2023 11km away and is so young that he wouldn't have been expected to breed before now

I have also seen Long-eared Owls (hornugle). They were a pair by an old Crow's nest but it did not appear that eggs had been laid yet

Mid April and expectations are rising

It is the middle of April and the next six weeks are the most exciting of the year (in the Oslo area at least). In addition to many new birds for the year there are also new birding sites to reacquaint myself with and I have now competed my first walk to the end of Årnestangen for the year as well as my first grilling of the mighty Svellet.

Conditions today at Svellet were magical and I have a small but growing hope that this will be one of those Svellet springs that are entered into the history books, or at least get remembered on this blog. Today the water level (3.61m) was perfect and there were enormous areas of shallow water and wet mud. 2000 Teal and 234 Curlew were both good counts and the quality came in the form of a male Garganey, a Bar-tailed Godwit plus two very early Ruff and a Redshank. The weather over the coming weeks will be key to whether conditions remain perfect and we need just enough rain such that the mud doesn’t dry up but not too much rain (or sun that causes lots of melt water to flow down the river) such that water levels do not rise too quickly. I hope every birder in Oslo and Akershus is praying to the Birds Gods.

Svellet from the eastern side. Even though I describe conditions as perfect the distances are very long and a scope is essential and even then not always enough to identify all the birds out there

and some of the Teal (krikkand) and also the Garganey (knekkand). As I said they are a long way away

Årnestangen has also delivered with another very early wader in the form of a Whimbrel, an early Swallow and a good selection of raptors including a Red Kite which flew low over my head without me seeing it but that I then caught up with in the scope at about 6km range…

Taiga Bean Goose and Greylags at Årnestangen today. This is a relatively late bird as were the 4 Tundra Beans I saw yesterday

the bird was close to the Geylags in size and had a long slender neck and long thin bill with thin lower mandible.

I had a very enjoyable and successful morning guiding Barbara from Canada on Monday and we saw 60 species including Jack Snipe, Black and Red-throated Divers, Lesser Spotted and Black Woodpeckers. And if you don’t believe my description then read Barbara’s 😊

one of three Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) at Fornebu. This bird has been regularly feeding in the open and to me looks very much like a Broad-billed Sandpiper...

and a more expected shot of a Jack

and a Common Snipe (enkeltbekkasin)

male Kestrel (tårnfalk) in Maridalen

and a Mistle Thrush (duetrost) in The Dale

Little Ringed Plover (dverglo) are back at Fornebu and will hopefully breed again this year

and Ringed Plovers (sandlo) are also back at last years nest site although they have less and less space available to them

Stock Dove (skogdue)

Red Kite

Yesterday was the first day with some passerine migrants flocking, if in small numbers, on the fields in Maridalen with 10 Mistle Thrushes, 6 Fieldfare, 10 Skylarks, 20 odd Chaffinch and the first Brambling all together. And this is just the start of things to come! The first Lapwings are also back with two reported on Saturday and then I had 5 birds yesterday and they were even displaying giving their evocative calls whilst Skylarks sang overhead – things cannot sound more springy than that!

Maridalen’s best bird of the year, and one which may be, although I hope won’t be, hard to beat, came on Friday when a Red Kite flew in front of the car. It was flying low and into a strong head wind but unfortunately never stopped and heard south over the lake and I was able to watch it for over 10 minutes. When it got to the southern end of the lake it then started soaring and was in sight for so long that I decided to drive down there but of course couldn’t find after the 5 minutes it took to get there. This is now my fourth sighting of the species in Maridalen and the second best views I have managed. I often proclaim that a day will be a great day for raptors and talk about Falsterbo Lite but very rarely do my predictions come true. On Friday I would definitely have proclaimed that the day was absolutely awful for raptors and we wouldn’t see any - bar maybe a local Goshawk – just shows how much I know!

Saturday had me guiding Paul and Ann from Connecticut and a very enjoyable day it was but for a bird guide it was a nightmare with, despite my utmost efforts, none of the three target species revealing themselves. I had communicated that it would not be easy to find them given the time of the year but that all three didn’t play ball was a major disappointment. We did see a lot of other birds though...

when I first spotted the Red Kite (rødglente) from the car it was close and flying at tree top height clearly looking for food but it kept flying south into the strong wind and never came closer

it looks as though it had recently eaten as the crop seems full

flying over the lake with appartment buildings under Grefsenkollen as the background

and here flying over Storøya

this years must count as an average date. Given how low cold it was in Jan and Feb then I had expected a late arrival this year but the thaw has come suddenly and without nighttime frosts the snow has melted quickly and most importantly for Lapwings the ground has thawed

once you find the eye then you also just about make out there is a Long-eared Owl (hornugle) in this picture

the video of the Long-eared Owl may be pants but I did manage to take a quite nice video of a Badger at the same place:

Mistle Thrush (duetrost)

there has been a steady passage of Whooper Swans (sangsvane) heading north

Taiga guiding

This weekends guiding had me praying to the Bird Gods and wondering what I had done to displease them before eventually being giving their slightly limited blessing.

Martyn, Jo and Stella had come to Oslo to see our special winter birds and especially Hawk Owl and I was determined they would leave happy.

On Saturday the target was the specialities of Maridalen and surrounding forests and on Sunday it was the taiga areas of Hedmark. 

Saturday was sunny, windless and cold with temperatures down to -20C in the forest and on Sunday it was forecast to be same but ended up being cloudy with occasional snow and temperatures down to -23C. We experienced near white out conditions a couple of times when we were in low cloud and whilst cool to experience it was not the best conditions for finding birds.

On Saturday the targets were Hazel Grouse, Pygmy Owl and interesting woodpeckers. Hazel Grouse took an hour and a half and just as we were about to head back to the car empty handed I had one last attempt and finally a bird sang. It then took another 15 minutes to find the bird but it then sat directly above us in a tree and was so unaffected by our presence that it never even looked down at us.

Otherwise, the forest was very quiet with no peckers of any type.

Maridalen gave us Crested and Willow Tits, Goshawk, Dipper and Hawfinch and eventually Pygmy Owl which showed very well but far too briefly.

So, the two main targets were delivered but peckers disappointed.

 

Sunday we had a two hour drive to the taiga and I kept hoping the forecast sun would appear the further north we drove but instead we just saw lower and lower cloud. The forests were covered in thick snow but where were the birds?!? We slowly drove the forest roads for over 4 hours and saw only 11 species and only around 40 individual birds of which Bullfinches made up half of these…. 

For a long time a female Capercaille was the top bird before a Three-toed ‘pecker gave itself up but far too briefly and partly made up for the lack of peckers the day before but we still failed to see a Black. But where were the taiga species? Hawk Owl (which was the #1 priority for the whole weekend, Pine Grosbeak and Sibe Jay?

People were dozing off in the car but I was still searching for a lump on a tree top and FINALLY a Hawk Owl gave itself up. Only 30 metres from the road it showed just long enough for me to set up the scope so its yellow eyes could be studied before stooping down and never reappearing. That was the last bird we saw in the forest and a fitting end to the trip but I would have liked to be able to find Grosbeak and Sibe Jay. It wasn’t through lack of trying and if the sun had been shining then I think we would have had more birds perching on tree tops but we play with the cards we are dealt with.

 

Pictures were not my priority but here is a flavour of the weekend.

watching Hawkie

can you spot him?

a bit more recognisable here

the football in a tree is "my" Hazel Grouse

very close but he never lifted his head and looked at us!

female Capercaille (storfugl)

Pygmy Owl (spurveugle)

and a Three-toed 'pecker leaving stage right