Inland Guillemots

This morning as I headed to Brentetangen I considered instead stopping at Krokstrand where the conditions are much better for viewing birds exiting the inner Oslo fjord (due to it be narrow here) but decided to continue to Brentetangen as chances are much greater for species such as shearwaters (lirer) and skuas (joer). Turns out I should have stopped!

Whereas two and a half hours at Brentetangen gave me 700 Guillemots (lomvi) heading south and pretty much nothing else, Bjørn Olav who was at Krokstrand had 2 Brunnich's Guillemots (polarlomvi), Puffin (lunde) and Red-necked Grebe (gråstrupedykker).

Kurefjorden helped save the day slightly with good numbers of waders: over 100 Dunlin, 35 Ringed Plover (sandlo), 3 Little Stints (dvergsnipe), 2 Curlew Sandpipers (tundralo), a Grey Plover (tundralo) and 7 Bar-tailed Godwits (lappspove).

Coming home I dropped into Maridalen to see if the Guillemot invasion had made it here and indeed it had with eight birds on the water and six flying over plus this little one:

an out of habitat Guillemot on the road in Maridalen

I nearly ran over it and stopped the car to save it. After a couple of quick photos I tried to capture it. Despite being incredibly bad at walking and unable to take off from land it flapped around and snapped at my fingers with is sharp (looking) bill such that it took me a while to safely pick it up. I unknowingly managed to drop my mobile whilst doing this such that I was unable to take an in-hand photo of the “little penguin” as the newspapers are reporting these birds which have been turning up in the streets of Oslo. I took it down to the water where it swam off strongly and dived so will hopefully survive as longas  it heads south and makes it back to open sea rather than continuing to head north which a number of others have done (many inland records).

Back on water: a close bird, moving fast away from you is not the easiest subject for a 500mm lens!

 Another Guillemot I watched very close to land was chasing a dragonfly as though trying to eat it.

Guillemot chasing dragonfly. Food item or curiosity?

Also on Maridalsvannet a single Black-throated Diver (storlom) still but ducks have yet to arrive with only a single Goldeneye (kvinand). A flock of 300 Chaffinches (bokfink) feeding in a stubble field did not reveal anything rarer in their midst.