Refugees fleeing.....and returning

The weather forecast has us to believe that we will get our first real taste of winter tomorrow and the rain that fell yesterday in downtown Oslo has settled as snow on the hills around the city. I therefore accepted that I could no longer put off changing to winter tyres on the car so set to work. Just as I was beginning a message came through that the refugees were stil present but more excitingly there was a PS that a probable Great Northern Diver (islom) was offshore the same location. GN Diver is equally rare in Oslo as the ugly ducklings so this was exciting news. I had 4 wheels to change over though so would have to wait a bit. 20 minutes later and I was half way through changing the second wheel when the phone beeped again. With the bolts safely tightened I checked the phone to see that the ID was confirmed and it was feeding close inshore. What to do? I chose to continue with the wheel changing and whilst struggling with the final wheel (I will need to visit a garage....) came a message that the diver was actually most likely a White-billed Diver. Equally as rare in Oslo but an even more exciting bird. I gave up changing wheel 4, cleaned up and headed down. A phonecall on the way revealed it had been lost to sight but was most likely further in Lysakerfjord so I headed to a place that would give me a view of this area and searched for 30 minutes without joy. This bird could very well be the same one that has been seen a couple of times in the Oslofjord in the last month so may turn up again.

One “highlight” of searching for the diver was that I saw the two refugees in flight flying from Huk over to Fornebu and therefore got a new Akershus tick. 5 minutes later they flew back to Oslo having obviously not found Bærum to their liking.

I went up to Huk where there was a small twitch in motion and some pleasant people to talk to but I was most interested in scanning the sea for the diver. Here again I failed though even though the sea was nearly without a ripple. There was only one auk, a Guillemot (lomvi), to see. As I’ve said before I hope the birds that were pushed in by the storms have managed to fly back out of the fjord rather than perishing of starvation.

the refugees in flight over Fornebu with the blue building to the left being the very pleasant Sjøflyhavnakro resturant

the last bird I took a picture of here was a Manx Shearwater, not quite the same...