August guiding

 Today I was guiding Heidi from New York (check out her great digiscope videos on Twitter @heidicleven).

We had a great morning and saw a number of good birds really well including Goshawk, Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Whooper Swan and Red-throated Diver.

adult Red-throated Diver (smålom) with a fish it is taking to young on a smaller lake somewhere in the forest

Mink are very much unwanted in Norwegian nature but have become very much at home and show little fear of humans

an adult Goshawk (hønsehauk) in wing moult. A male judging by small build

and a fresh juvenile which was a much bulkier bird and therefore a likely female

Cormorant (storskarv) of the subspecies sinensis

two adult Buzzards (musvåk) which were displaying

Little Grebe

Some images from a snowy Oslo today

Little Grebe (dvergsykker) in Oslo Harbour 

Little and the Large Silent type 

this 2cy Mute Swan has moulted a lot of its brown juvenile feathers and replaced them with white adult feathers

and will one day look like this and no longer be the ugly duckling

a Cormorant (storskarv) of the race sinensis (mellomskarv)

male Velvet Scoters (sjøorre)

female Velvet Scoter

Xmas shopping and some birding

Christmas shopping today gave the chance for some urban birding. I packed the cheap and trusty Sigma 70-300mm lens in my rucksack and stopped off first at Frognerpark. Here there were 80 Mallards and six Teal. The six Teal hold themselves apart from the Mallards and all carried on sleeping whilst the Mallards went into a frenzy when I threw out some bread. What and when do the Teal eat? One of the Teal, a ringed female (and possibly the bird seen on Akerselva?), kept itself away from the other five (a male and four females) which is exactly the same as I observed last year (same number of birds with only one male and a ringed female that didn’t mix with the others). If these are exactly the same birds then have none of them had young which have followed them?

Surprisingly there was not a single gull in Frognerpark and by the station in Majorstua there were only a few gulls with two adult Black-headed and 15 each of Common and Herring. It is my feeling that the numbers of gulls and especially smaller gulls that winter in Oslo has declined sharply the last few years but unfortunately the data set available is not as good as it could be due to the refusal of some to record their observations.

I also checked out Akersevla at Vaterland. Here there were 80 odd Herring Gulls but as usual no other gull species here. A young Cormorant of the subspecies sinensis was incredibly tame and would probably have shaken hands with me if it could. There are plenty of fish in the river and I don’t think the bird was sick but has just got very used to people (has been here a while).

uncropped iPhone photo of the juv sinensis Cormorant (mellomskarv)

This Mallard (stokkand) in Frognerparken was strange. It has many signs to male plumage but the bill is that of female (although it is also deformed). In addition it has a small, cute, head making it look strange. I'm not sure as to whether this is a female with an overdose of male hormones or a male with an overdose of female hormones although suspect it is a female. Such birds are known as intersex Mallards.

the Mallards went crazy when I threw out bread

but the Teals (krikkender) didn't even raise raise their heads.

A thin covering of snow and a cloudy sky had completely changed the landscape in Maridalen today.

yesterday

today

Flippin snow

Another day of falling snow where being inside and not driving was the smartest choice and further obervations of the gardens Blackbirds followed. I finally managed to take better pictures of the definite 2cy male Blackbird but are still unsure about the other bird.  On these pictures you can see the browner wing feathers contrasting with blacker body feathers which is typical of 1^st winter birds whereas the other bird had a more uniform colour suggesting it is an adult and therefore cannot be a male.

There was also a new adult Blackbird with a large amount of black on the bill or so I thought. The pictures actually show it has a lot of muck on its bill in addition to some black so could well be a bird I’ve recorded previously. These pictures show that it has black wing feathers meaning it is an adult rather than a 2cy (1^st winter) and therefore does show that there is a lot of variation in the bill colour of adults (3cy + ). Following me? Intersted? Probably not….

The  2cy male Blackbird

one of the black-billed females and not, I think, the one I've shown before

red female

the male with dirt on his bill

 Well I didn’t find it that interesting either and instead decided to head out but today with rather more public transport and a tad less walking. Checking the downtown gull sites revealed nothing interesting (a white-winged gull must surely turn up soon) except for a very smart yellow-legged Herring Gull (rather than Yellow-legged Gull) but at Aker Brygge the dolphin was again showing well. It was once again keeping to a very small area (reminds me of tales of tigers that have lived in cages and once released into bigger enclosure continue to pace the same small area of their old cage) but had moved a couple of hundred metres from yesterday. Today it was possible to take pictures with the city’s landmarks in the background. I switched to my 18-55mm lens today which made finding the animal in the view finder easier and also gave the pictures and video more context.

A local boat owner asked me if I was watching the Porpoise (nise). I replied that it was a Bottle-nosed Dolphin (tumler) but he said he and the other boat owners were sure this was a porpoise although there has been a dolphin before and they believe there are 3-4 individuals. His reason for this being a nise were that it was larger than a dolphin, wasn’t jumping as the dolphin had and was darker. The size argument is incorrect as adult Bottle-noses are upto 3.5metres whereas Porpoises are rarely over 1.5m. I had actually worried that this animal was too small but that was more an illusion from being so close as when viewing the animal at longer range today it was clearly much too large for a porpoise. That it isn’t jumping is I imagine more to do with how it is feeling and it wouldn’t surprise me that with the cold weather it has less desire to jump. The colour though is very dark for a Bottle-nose and also worried me yesterday. However I have found pictures of individuals that are so dark, see here , and colour is clearly very variable in this species. In addition it is beaked although this has been hard to see and this rule out porpoise. I have looked at other dolphin species or small toothed whales but can’t find anything else it could be.

 

dolphin with the City Hall (Rådhuset) in the background

and Akershus Festning

To give an impression of size - here from Aker Brygge with Hovedøya in the background. The video an other pictures were taken by the boats on the right when the animal was right by the boats

adult Comorant (storskarv) in breeding plumage. This bird is of the southern race sinensis which used to be considered scarce in Norway but now has a colong at the Great Big Dump (Øra) which numbers hundreds if not thousands of pairs and this now appears to be commoner than the northern race carbo around Oslo



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This Herring Gull really stood out with its yellow legs and clean (unstreaked) head (although a few other adults also had clean heads). Such a bird naturally leads your thoughts towards Yellow-legged Gull (gulbeinmåke) but this is actually just a Herring Gull with yellow legs. Note here that the eyering is orange instead of red and.....

 

the wing has much too little black

 

 

Fornebu again...

A probable female Black-eared Wheatear was seen at Fornebu yesterday evening so that was a good enough reason for me to get down there today. Unfortunately all the Wheatears I saw were bog standard Northern/Common but a pleasant time was had. Blue skies and almost no wind were not the best weather for finding something interesting and a female Redstart was the highlight on the passerine front. It took a while before I saw the tail on this bird as it skulked low down in a bush and I was thinking far rarer alternatives for a while. Alongside the Redstart was a Crested Tit in completely atypical habitat - sallow bushes in the middle of wasteland.
The nice weather did at least encourage the local raptors to show off with singles of Kestrel, Merlin, Sparrowhawk and Goshawk. The Kestrel was particularly showy and was mobbed by both the Merlin and Sparrowhawk in addition to local Crows and Jackdaws.
Lingering summer visitors were Yellow Wagtail, Chiffchaff, Blackcap and Swallow plus Dunnock.
I decided to pay attention to the Cormorants today as both subspecies (Carbo and Sinensis) have been reported and sure enough I found both to be present. The following photo has a Carbo (the northern cliff nesting subspecies) on the left and 2 Sinensis (the southern tree nesting subspecies) on the right.

How do you tell them apart? Well the differences are rather subtle. If you click on the picture you will see a large higher resolution version which will help. On the bird on the left notice how the angle of the gape (the innermost area of the yellow around the bill) is rather actute whereas on the righthand bird it is squared off. Additionally notice that the right hand bird has far more yellow around the bill (this is called the gular area) and less white surrounding the yellow than the left hand bird.

Definitely subtle differences but there are enough behaviourally differences for them to be classified as subspecies although here they seem to be quite happy hanging out together.