Ducks

Today was another windless, blue skied day over Oslo but over Nordre Øyeren, where I was, there was a thick layer of cold fog.

Birds there were though with a surprisingly high number of ducks. The east side of Øyeren seems to be favoured this year and after seeing a report by Erling Hobøl from Wednesday I decided to visit Monsrudvika which I very rarely go to.

When I first got a glimpse of the water it was very atmospheric with loads of ducks being just visible through the fog and he air was full of their calls. The highlight here was a massive 34 Shoveler which is the same number as Erling had and is the largest count reported in ArtsObservasjoner for Norway EVER! Lots of Wigeon (400) here plus Teal and Mallard but surprisingly no other dabbling ducks. Merkja had a better selection of ducks with a further 3 Shoveler, 3 Gadwall, 11 Pintail and 500 Mallard alongside 50 each of Wigeon and Teal.

Diving ducks were more or less absent and there were very few geese or swans to see today but the numbers of dabbling ducks are very good for these parts.

I went over to the other side of Øyeren and checked out Snekkervika and Fautøya. Quite a few Wigeon and Teal here too and the cow field revealed 14 Snipe and 2 Jack Snipe, the latter of which predictably only flew up as I was about to step on them.

I had a few Bullfinches today of which one gave the trumpet call and another group only called very quietly but it sounded like they were also giving a variant of this call. It would therefore seem that an invasion of eastern Bullfinches is underway.

 

very atmospheric with lots of ducks through the fog today

here some of the Shovelers (skjeand) are visible

here are 6 Canada x Greylag Goose hybrids. There was a brood of 5 with their parents plus a large and different looking bird (just left of centre with a pale breast) that was together with a Greylag and 2 Canada Geese

A Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin)