Refugees

In grey, cold and damp conditions James Ewen and I stood on the top of an office block and didn't film or even see a Peregrine Falcon (vandrefalk) so there is still a lot of work and much luck needed to get the final footage in the can. A subsequent trip to Frognerpark revealed a hoped for Grey Heron (hegre) but that flew off before being captured on the hard drive so not much luck today.

Whilst not filming Peregrines we did have this Goshawk (hønsehauk) flyby with a Crow in tow. I really think that Canon should look at how poor this picture is and accept that it is down to their poor equipment (a 550D camer body) and should immediately make me a Canon Ambassador and send the new 7D for field trials

I persuaded James to head towards Bygdøy with the promise of Herons (4 there last week) but with me really hoping to find a Little Auk (alkekonge) or Razorbill (alke) to add to my Oslo year list. No herons or auks but a few Velvet (sjøorre) and Common Scoter (svartand) and a pair of Hawfinches (kjernebiter). Also a couple of African refugees looking cold and confused.

Hawfinch - just look at the size of that bill

this poor African refugee has been failed by Norway's usually generous welfare system and was forced to scavenge around rubbish bins

 

here the two refugees looking longingly south and reflecting how life wasn't really so bad before

if the footage James is taking here makes it to the final cut then that will be a sign that all his other plans went pear shaped

and the refugee posing for a mug shot ofr his new identity papers

These Egyptian Geese (niland) were seen two days ago on one of the islands off Oslo. A rather unsatisfying Norwegian tick to be honest and not the way I had thought I would equal the Oslo year list record (173 species). Difficult to know where they have come from (except of course that its not from the species native Africa) but previous Norwegian records have been accepted into Category C based on the feral populations elsewhere in Europe but they could just as easily be escapes especially a bird from a couple of years back which was incredibly tame. But come to think about would anyone really want to keep such an ugly bird in captivity? Well maybe they bought a couple of cute, downy ducklings and when they grew up and revealed they really were the ugly ducklings they just decided to let them go?