Some videos

Guiding can be stressful when the birds don’t cooperate and the weather isn’t ideal. I was guiding Nick from England yesterday and Nick had a long list of desired birds but 4 ticks for someone with a world list over 4000 can't be too bad. We started with Black Woodpecker which proved easy but frustrating. Two youngsters were making a lot of noise hanging out of the nest but we had to wait nearly a whole hour for an adult to appear with food. The reason for this long wait may have been that the adults were trying to encourage the youngsters to leave the nest because we did actually see one of the youngsters make it first flight. Given that they are born in a narrow hole where they have no chance of flexing their wings it is pretty impressive that they can just launch themselves out of the hole and automatically manage to fly.

Hazel Grouse were not so accommodating but Common Rosefinch (at least 6 birds), Icterine Warbler and Long-tailed Tit all showed. At Østensjøvannet the Corncrake showed briefly in flight and then after a long wait sang just a few metres from us without showing itself and must nearly have walked between our feet without us seeing it.

Searching for owls and other nocturnal singers was hampered by strong winds and cool temperatures and we only had Woodcock and Water Rail for our troubles plus 5 Moose including a mother with two very small calves.

 

The camera was not used in anger yesterday but here are a couple of videos from Friday.