Ogling

Like most men I am quite easy to please: let me ogle a good looking bird early in the morning and I’ll be happy for the rest of day. Are you reading this Mrs. OsloBirder? ;-)

My good looking bird was of course Mrs OsloBirder but soon afterwards I was also fortunate enough to spy a Ring Ouzel in Maridalen. With this in the box my spring is now complete and I can find other things to do than birding!

Schools were closed today in Oslo because of the fact that 2016 is a Leap Year and the extra day needs to be lost. Yes you read that right – in Norway they are scared of giving kids too much education. I have never before encountered such nonsense!!!!!!!!!!

Surprisingly my oldest daughter was happy to join me in Maridalen where we were both armed with a camera. There was not an awful lot for us to photograph but Long-tailed Tits put us both through our paces and we had frogs and brick licking Crossbills. It was a good opportunity to compare the results of my new camera versus my old one with the 70-300mm lens mounted.

Whilst we were out the first Maridalen Osprey of the year flew over. Just 10 seconds earlier I had commented that we could expect one as the ice on the lake had disappeared during the course of the night and then bingo! After this I kept talking about Golden Eagles but couldn’t repeat my luck.

I was very happy with how some of my pictures came out today and in good (but not sun) light I had some pictures of brick licking Common Crossbills which I think are just fab! The only issue I am having now is with autofocus especially when birds are close or if there are some branches in the way although I think there is a manual focus alternative which I need to investigate.

A good looking bird. Male Ring Ouzel (ringtrost)

first Osprey (fiskeørn) of the year in Maridalen

quite happy with this shot - a brick licking male Common Crossbill (grankorsnebb)

also happy with this. The shutter speed was set to 1/500 sec but the good light would have allowed me to have a much faster speed which would have captured the wings perfectly

female - note the tongue

Maridalsvannet yesterday evening. The ice is already breaking up

and by this morning was all gone (the wind having sped things up)

White Wagtail (linerle)

we had good views and photo opportunities with a pair of Long-tailed Tits (stjertmeis). This bird has a lot of black in the head which suggests it is an integrade with the European subspecies europaeus

wheras the other bird was a normal white-headed caudatus although note that in the top right picture when the feathers are raised that it looks like they are darker further down

And to finish off a showcase of my daughter Emily, OsloBirder jr's pictures:

a young male Common Crossbill

Long-tailed Tit in action

Long-tailed Tit posing

and more action

White Wagtail in habitat