In England going to the gee gees means going to the horse races. In the birding world we also have gee gees or GGs aka birds beginning with Great Grey which in Norway means Owl and Shrike.
This winter has seen no movements of Great Grey and Hawk Owls
into southern Norway with birds seemingly staying in their breeding areas where
there are clearly plenty of rodents there and therefore no need to go on a
wander to find better feeding areas. From what I understand the rodent situation
is so good in GG breeding areas that they are primarily hunting within the
forest and at night so even there are not particularly easy to see even if
there are (relatively) lots of them.
That one should turn up away from breeding areas and in a
relatively small area of woodland is therefore surprising but a drip of
pictures on Facebook that then turned into a bubbling brook before morphing
into a raging torrent showed that there was a bird in Østfold near Fredrikstad.
There was clearly an attempt at secrecy for the birds sake but as my own
experiences in Maridalen a few years ago taught me secrecy is not possible as
soon as a couple of other people know and especially if the pull of Social Media
is too strong to resist (which it wasn’t for me that time).
I had made an attempt to see the bird on Monday when a
shopping trip to Sweden with Jr only involved a 10 minute detour to see the
bird. A few likely looking older men in camouflage clothing and attempting to
hide cameras showed I was in the right spot but an attempt to find out if they
had seen the bird was met with answers suggesting they didn’t know what I was
talking about until one of them recognised me and realised it would be a bit
silly to try to deny the obvious. The bird had been seen earlier but had
disappeared and I therefore decided to continue on the shopping trip and try
again at dusk on the way home. This did not reveal the bird in rather wet
conditions but a check of the weather forecast showed that Wednesday would be a
bright, sunny and windless day in another wise dull week so a plan was hatched.
I have made a long given promise that I would show a
Maridalen regular a Great Grey Owl if I ever saw one so I asked him if he
wanted to join me and unsurprisingly he did not need asking twice. We left Oslo
at 0800 with sunrise at 0915 and arrived just after that mysterious and seldom
seen golden orb had risen over the horizon. We met another Maridalen regular
and after promising to call each other when/if we found the bird went searching
for it. After two hours all we had found was a Great Grey Shrike which is a
very good bird but not quite as Great as its namesake that we were hoping to
see. We kept on searching though and on returning to the road met a togger who
told us that even though he hadn’t seen it that it had apparently been seen by
others flying in “that direction” (he pointed). So we continued walking in that
direction and after adding a few more thousand steps to our tally we saw some
green clad men (and a woman) pointing big lenses at something and there it was.
The Maridalen regular was there too but hadn’t been kind enough to send us the
message he had unprompted earlier promised to send. Apparantly he “hadn’t been
allowed”…. I do not know who was policing the viewing but the steady stream of
other toggers that were turning up showed that there were clearly different
rules for different people.
We were able to view the bird well but it was quite distant and
no one tried to get any closer - it was quite refreshing to see such self control.
The bird was cleary just enjoying the sun and preening every now and again before
it dived down at something and was then mostly hidden from us but was clearly
in hunt mode.
So a double Gee Gee day - what a great way to finish the
birding year!
| Gee |
| Gees |
| Great Grey Owl (lappugle) |
| here obscured by branches as it hunts low down |
| Great Grey Shrike (varsler) |