Ruff retreats

It doesn't get much hotter in Norway than the 28C we are enjoying at the moment. This type of weather is not exactly conducive to productive birding but interesting birds can always turn up.
I wasn't lucky enough to find or even see the Little Tern (dvergterne) that turned up today at Illene, only an hour away from Oslo but whilst enjoying the day with the family at Fornebu a Ruff (brushane) dropped in. We were sitting by the ornamental pond in the middle of Nansenparken when the Ruff flew in and circled over our heads a few times before eventually landing. It allowed close approach as this iphone photo shows.

terrible picture but it shows how close the Ruff was

Its clean plumage showed it to be a juvenile and largish size probably a male. This is early for a juvenile and looking at incubation and fledging times the egg would have been middle/end of May - maybe it is the son of one of the birds Rune and I saw at Nekmyrene?

At the same time as this juvenile was already migrating south a female Red-breasted Merganser (siland) had four youngsters in tow that could only have been a couple of days old. At times the mother swam too fast for her offspring and they had to run over the water to catch up.