Far too little cloud (and lots of
quite pleasant blue sky and sun) coupled with a slight wind from the north
meant that today was not going to be good for much other than taking some photos
of commoner species and maybe a raptor or two and that is exactly what today
delivered.
I started at Fornebu where I
hoped to see if the Bearded Tits (skjeggmeis) were still present but failed to
find any and the lack of recent records strongly suggests they have moved on. There
was precious little else but I did have my first Linnet (tornirisk) of the year
and a couple of Twite (bergirisk). I also had my first Song Thrush (måltrost)
of the year doing what its name suggests it should to do. It took me a while to
tune in and realised what I was listening to – it is a fantastic song!
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| A Song Thrush picture of this quality doesn't really deserve a place in the public demain but it was my first of the year and is what from I can see the only picture I have ever taken of this species |
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| A Common Redpoll (gråsisik) rather than a Lesser Redpoll (brunsisik) that breed at Fornebu |
A message from Per B that he was
coming in to give Maridalen his first visit of 2014 persuaded me to drop
Fornebu (not that much persuading was needed) and head to the local (patch that
is). Here a pair of Long-tailed Tits (stjertmeis) were extremely cooperative
and the light was probably the best I’ve had to take pictures of this species.
They came very close but it is SOOOOOOO difficult taking pictures of these
beauties. I had the camera on 1/800 sec but that is clearly not enough as they
are moving all the time and some of the best motifs are when they are flying
which just ended up being blurred – something to work on at a later date. Then when they sit still for more than a nano
second and you do get a sharp picture there is a twig in the way...
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| could have been better |
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| this is better |
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| always a twig in the way..... |
I positioned myself at Kirkeby
thinking Per was still on his way and scanned for raptors, and scanned for
raptors and did a bit more of the same without seeing anything. Then a Blue Tit
(blåmeis) started giving an alarm call and I scanned the sky directly above. A
fast moving raptor looked like a Sparrowhawk (spurvehauk) but once the bins
were raised metamorphosised into a Golden Eagle (kongeørn)!!! A young bird it
was heading purposefully NW but eventually started thermalling over a distant
hillside where it showed for over 5 minutes and just long enough for Per (who
was actually already in Maridalen) to arrive and see it.
After this we had a couple of
Buzzards (musvåk) and three Sparrowhawks heading over plus seven Pink-footed
Geese (kortnebbgås) heading north. A flock of over 40 Snow Buntings (snøspurv)
flew past (probably having been feeding unseen on a nearby field) and allowed me
to take a picture but Per somehow couldn’t get on to them.
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| Golden Eagle - not quite sure about the age of this one but reckon it to be a 3cy due to the pale area on the upperwing |
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| Snow Buntings. I picked them up when they all showed their white underparts like the bird in the inset but unfortunately they had changed direction when I got the camera on them |
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