Getting started

My birding year has yet to start properly but today I at least got out in the fine winter weather today. Mrs Oslo Birder and I had hoped to do some cross country skiing in Maridalen but the recent thaw and now freezing temperatures has meant that the lovely powder snow of a week ago has become a thin layer of ice so we dropped the skiing and walked instead. I added a few species to a year list that stood at a meagre 11 species after 1 Jan with the highlight being a male Black Woodpecker (svartspett).

Black Woodpecker (svartspett) in Maridalen

After that we watched the Hobbit - a fantastically made film but why have they had to be so greedy that they add loads of unnecessary scenes to make a thin childs book into a film trilogy?

It has now been three weeks since I last saw a Hawk Owl and you would think that I was now successfully detoxed. Well, I don’t think that I am. A report today of two within a kilometre of each other only 40 minutes from Oslo (and both were also present 11 days ago) means that I know where I am taking the camera tomorrow.