The Eco+ Warrior

I was driving an E Golf today which was given to me by the garage as a temporary car. Unfortunately the experience has hardly left be wanting to get even greener and swap petrol for electricity. The car had been charging overnight but when I picked it up was not fully charged and the 160km range I was told to expect was down to 110km according to the car. Still that should be enough. Once I started driving though the range dropped far quicker than kilometres I was driving and in the end I squeezed out 90km from the car and arrived back at the garage driving at a snail’s pace with the radio and A/C turned off and Eco + driving mode selected!

The birding experiences I had today were also not enough to compensate for the stress of driving that car. Today was exceptionally quite. There was no wind making a noise but neither were there any birds making a noise. At Svellet in Nordre Øyeren the water level is exceptionally low. I usually complain that the water level is too high here and ruins the feeding conditions for waders but now it is so low that unless we have some rain I fear it will dry out and become a desert out there! Today though it was still wet enough and among 550 Black-headed Gulls were 22 Curlew, 37 Lapwing and 6 Oystercatcher. With some Snipe in Snekkervika I had four species of wader – heh heh!

I allowed myself a trip up into Maridalen on the way back but was very nervous I wouldn’t be able to get out again. Here there was also nothing new or exciting to see and although I didn’t find the Jack Snipe there was plenty of evidence that it has stayed on since Monday with lots of droppings and plenty of very fresh looking bill marks in the mud.

 

this female Green Woodpecker showed very well in Maridale and was I think close to its nest hole

I first heard some scraping noises and saw this peering out at me

which then became this

a panorama of Svellet taken with 4 pictures from my phone and then automatically stitched together using Photomerge Panorama in Photoshop Elements which worked incredibly well. Note the near absence of water

pairs of Goosander (laksand) and Teal (krikkand) in Maridalen

evidence of the Jack Snipe - probing beak holes and droppings

 

Another 2 Cranes (trane) flying over Maridalen were a bit closer than on Monday

I also saw these talons