Today was one of those fantastic winter days: very cold
(below -15C) with clear blue skies and white frost on the trees. I paid a visit
to Fornebu hoping there would be some birds on the sea as the inner fjord is
fast freezing over. I stopped first at Storøya where I picked out the over
wintering Kestrel (tårnfalk) perched atop a tree â la Hawkie. There is
obviously a good supply of rodents here as wintering Kestrels are a rare sight
in these parts – would be nice if a Hawk Owl joined him.
I also had a flock of small finches feeding in alders which
turned out to be Common Redpolls (gråsisik). In the warm early morning light
they looked very brown initially and I assumed they were a flock of Lesser
Redpolls (brunsisik) which breed here in small numbers. Seeing them better and
in more neutral light though showed all the birds I saw well to be Common.
Lesser Redpolls have also been reported here recently but I couldn’t ID any conclusively
today. Norway stands (nearly) alone in treating these as two separate species
rather than subspecies something which must soon be changed.
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Common Redpoll (gråsisik) |
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cool haircut! |
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snow bath |
The sea at Furst Brygge was nearly ice free although further
in at Halden Brygge there was a lot of ice. Velvet Scoter (sjøorre) were the
commonest duck with a grand total of 29 counted but the rarest was a female/immature
Smew (lappfiskand). This bird has been around for over a week but only reported
once in the meantime. It was at quite some range frequenting the sound between
the two Vassholm islands but showed every now and again. 14 Mute Swans here
were a high number and a sign that other areas have frozen forcing them to move
on. Another observer had (and took good pictures) of Little Grebes and Common
Scoter here later in the day which were absent when I was there thus showing
that there is some (local?) movement going on.
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Mute Swans (knoppsvane) |
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