OSLO BIRDER: Must to

I covered my two “must to” sites today: Maridalen and Svellet. With a clear night and sunshine today it was no surprise that most of yesterday’s ducks had gone and that the fields at Kirkeby were much quieter. There was still a nice male Redstart (rødstjert) though and the female Common Scoter (svartand) is still finding the lake to her liking and yet again there was a Great Crested Grebe. Bird of the day was a small dove flying over. I immediately thought of Turtle Dove (turtelldue) given the time of the year. It was however “only” a Collared Dove (tyrkerdue) but even so this was a Maridalen tick for me!!

At Svellet the rising water level has made the birds more concentrated and easier to see and there is still enough mud that the wader season has a few more days in it. It is interesting that this year and last the birds are all to be found in the south west whereas in previous years they favoured the north which still has lots of mudflats and looks no different than before. I suspect that river currents have created new food rich mudflats in the south west which were not present a few years ago. Greenshank (gluttsnipe) numbers have plateaued out and there were 280 today whilst Wood Sandpipers (grønnstilk) have increased to 100. There was only 1 Knot (polarsnipe), 2 Ruff (brushane), 1 Whimbrel (småspove), 2 Redshank (rødstilk), 1 Curlew (storspove) and 4 Oystercatchers (tjeld) giving them company when I was there although early afternoon there was loads of Knot, Spotted Redshank (sotsnipe) and a Bar-tailed Godwit (lappspove) seen which just goes to show how at this time of the year anything can happen.