Brian Minshill who follows the geese in Scotland has come over to Oslo for a few days birding and the hope to see the geese on their Norwegian staging grounds. The two GPS tagged birds had already moved north from Akershus last week to a sight near Braskeiderfoss in Hedmark county although 07 had moved even further north yesterday. We therefore set off not feeling sure we would find any Bean Geese today. We briefly checked the fields and river at Udenes but as expected there were no geese to be seen here and then drove a further two hours north into Hedmark. The tagged birds have been feeding exclusively in one small field and then resting on the nearby river. As we drove down to the river first a flock of Cranes flew up and then the geese also came into view in flight. We traced them to the river where we saw 51 birds of which 5 were tagged including 06 the maverick GPS tagged bird. It was great to see them, especially for Brian who had travelled at this time as this was when they were arriving in Akershus last year but had been watching the early spring unfolding and had been getting increasingly worried that he would miss the geese. We were probably not a day too early either as we received a message later in the day that 07 is already on the breeding grounds in Sweden!
Even though it rained constantly all day I tried to show Brian some of the big owls. We visited sites for all three but had to be content with just one of them: Ural Owl (slagugle) which showed itself through a crack in a nest box. To be honest all we could see was that it was an owl in there but the nest box only has one inhabitant.
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| fabalis Bean Geese including 4 collared birds. Also a single Pink-foot and 2 Canada Geese |
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