Maridalen needing a polish

I was co-leader for the local Bird Clubs trip around Maridalen this morning. The trip started well with two Osprey (fiskeørn) flying low over the car park at 0555 but after that things were quiet - in fact it felt like the quietest day so fat this spring. The continued sunny weather has caused birds to move on but the northerly winds are holding back a lot of the migrants that should be arriving now. It was also down to 5C overnight so there was little activity from insect eating birds early on although after 9am there were suddenly more birds to see. A distant singing Cuckoo (gjøk) and three Spotted Flycatchers (gråfluesnapper) which suddenly appeared around 9am were year ticks for me. Otherwise we saw the female Ring Ouzel (ringtrost) that is hanging around Kirkeby and had a good selection of commoner birds.

The strangest sighting of the day was a male Roe Deer (rådyr) swimming in the middle of Maridalsvannet. When I picked it up in my bins I had no idea what it was and had to put the ‘scope up. Quite why it chose to swim when it could have easily chosen to go around I don’t know but maybe it had been scared by a predator?

The only report so far today from Svellet included only 80 Greenshank but as the water level is still falling I hope this was just an incomplete count (as it is difficult to get a full overview) and there is more still to come.