A new year starts slowly

This year being no different to all the others means that my New Year birding has had a slow start with family and friends trumping birds. This morning as I waved off friends boarding the airport bus I heard a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and then, surprisingly, received a positive response from senior junior to join me for a trip to the Botanical Gardens. The 2BCs have been reported again the last couple of days. It is of course not possible to know if these are the same birds from before xmas which would mean they have not been predated as I had feared or whether they are new. However the news from other birders when we arrived that there were 5 present today definitely means that some of the birds are new. Unfortunately however the birds had been last seen 15 minutes before we arrived and despite an hours searching they did not show again. There was disappointingly little else to see either with 3 Hawfinch the highlights.

Whilst searching a message came through of Akershus’s first ever Caspian Gull. With junior senior in tow there was no chance of going for this bird but it was a most intriguing record. In addition to being a county first it was also reported as a recently fledged. In addition to being a very rare (unique?) mid winter breeding record it also hints at breeding close by. Is this a result of global warming? Of course the record needs to be approved and there could have been some confusion with regards the age of the bird but with the calibre of the finder I would doubt this to be the case ;-)