Per Christian and I had been planning a nocturnal owl trip and eventually decided upon this (Sunday) evening. The weather forecast (and reality) was perfect. A near full moon, cloudless sky and hardly a breath of wind. On top of this the local bird club had an outing last night and had 10 Tengmalm's Owl (perelugle), 4 Pygmy Owls (spurveugle) and 2 Tawny Owls (kattugle). Our destination was the same, which was the Mangen forests in Aurskog-Høland.
The moon was very bright and lit up the snow covered forest, countless stars shone and a shooting star whizzed through the sky. I really should have made a wish though...
Because despite the seemingly perfect conditions and the knowledge that owls were there we did not hear a single owl!!! We did hear a fox and some dogs and could possibly have heard a Pygmy Owl at the furthest limits of the human ear but it was baffling that we didn't score. We didn't even hear the wolf pack that inhabits these parts. To make matters worse I see that just a little but further north of where we were (and where we would have gone if we had more time) that 5 Tengmalm's were recorded between 1900 and 1945. The timings of the observations may be the important thing here. We did not arrive in prime owl habitat until after 2000. Perhaps the owls all sang early tonight for some reason and then got down to hunting??
I also tried Maridalen after dropping Per Christian off but drew an owl blank for the fourth time this year.
Dere må nok ha med dere en Hedmark-skåder om dere skal høre ugler :-)
ReplyDeleteJeg hadde ytterligere to perleugler på Hedmarksiden av fylkesgrensen, så det ble totalt syv ugler på turen. Den siste hørte jeg kl. 20.30.
Hei Jonas, det er helt sant at jeg trenger din hjelp når det gjelder ugle :-) når er jeg på vei til å prøve igjen!
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