Crested Tit Pipit

The last two days have been a bit hard going on the birding front not that I haven’t tried. I spent the whole of yesterday morning at Fornebu with Julian Bell but the weather was just too good and there were considerably fewer birds than on Monday. The only highlight, if you can call it that, was a large mixed finch flock of close to 200 birds but even here we managed to find nothing of particular interest.

Today I thought it would be worth trying Årnestangen. I didn’t expect there to be too many waders as it normally takes rain to being down large numbers but I hoped for a few and also some raptors (I still have hopes finding a Pallid Harrier (steppehauk) this autumn). As I drove out of Oslo just before 9am there was suddenly fog and it didn’t lift at Årnestangen until gone 11am. Luckily I had the enjoyable company of Erling Høbol so time went by quickly. Through the fog we heard a couple of waders and also the sound of Red-throated Pipit (lappiplerke) but more of that later.

When the fog finally started to lift a Peregrine (vandrefalk) flew in and scared away a flock of 8 small and unidentified waders and after that there was not a single wader to see! We did have two Peregrines and hunting Goshahawk (hønsehauk) and Sparrowhawk (spurvehauk) that later of which took a Meadow Pipit (heipiplerke) but it was painfully slow going. We kept scanning and listening. The sound of a Red-throated Pipit got us excited as it seemed to coming from close by. I went to investigate and started getting worried when I heard tit calls coming from the same bush and I found a Crested Tit (toppmeis). This bird tried, just like the Willow Tits (granmeis) of a few weeks ago, to migrate out from the point but turned round. This is a rare bird out here as the habitat is just completely wrong and rarer than Red-throated Pipit. The call it was making though was completely like the pipit to my ears and something I have never heard from Crested Tit before. See what you think on this video. I have decided not to record the Red-throated Pipit we were sure we heard in the mist as I just cannot rule out it was the tit flying around.

Scanning for raptors gave little reward and certainly no harriers but an adult White-tailed Eagle (havørn) was a strange sight. It gave itself away by scaring up flocks of Greylag Geese (grågås) and when I first found it in the scope at long range thought I was looking at a Marsh Harrier (sivhauk). The Eagle was hunting like a harrier by flying low and slowly and would stop up like a harrier and nearly hover before dropping down. I have never seen this behaviour from a White-tailed Eagle before. It looked like it was hunting Teal but didn’t catch anything whilst we watched.

The birding day ended with a shameful attempt (which I had promised myself would not happen) for a plastic duck that ended in failure – I just couldn’t stop myself taking the 2 minute detour but have learnt my lesson now.