17 May

17 May is Norway’s national day which means dressing up in national dress and going in parades with lots of flag waving and song singing. Despite the rain, the local parade was rather brightened up for me by a male Redstart (rødstjert) in a garden only 100m from the house which flew into a vent on a house, seemingly inspecting it for a nest site, and then flew out and sang briefly. If they breed in this area it will be quite a sensation as they have become nearly extinct as a breeding bird in Oslo city over the last decade. Quite why it would chose a vent on a house rather than the two fine nesting boxes we have in our garden I don’t know though! It would be exciting to see it coming into the Great Tit nest box and trying to evict the current tenants!