I did
not go looking for owls as I had heard it is a terrible breeding season for
them. Afterwards though I’ve heard that a few pairs of Ural Owl have bred so I
may make an attempt for this species next week. Other than owls though Hedmark
is very important for holding the only remaining Ortolan and Rustic Buntings in
Norway. These species have declined drastically over the last few decades and
in 2015 there were fewer than 10 known singing
males of Rustic Bunting and I believe under 30 of Ortolan (although little is
published despite there being govt. funded counts of both species). The Ortolan
population is I believe well known but there must be more Rustic Buntings out
there as the available habitat is just too vast and often hard to access that
no matter how dedicated the surveyor there is no chance of finding all the
birds that are out there.
I have
been lucky enough to see Rustic Bunting on the breeding grounds in every year
since 2013. In the first two years I had to put in a lot of hours to see the
birds as they were already paired and breeding and the male stops singing and
they become incredibly difficult to detect although when you do find them they
show at close range. Last year I had a singing 2cy male which is the first time
I’ve had the species singing (apart from a couple of 5 second burst of song
before that) and also a breeding pair. This year I heard a male singing as soon
as I arrived on site and although he took a bit of finding I eventually got to
see him well and he was a fine 3cy+ bird. He moved around quite a bit and would
stop singing for 15 minutes only to start again 100 metres away. My assumption
was this was an unpaired male but as I was on my way out of the area (and
making me turn back) I suddenly heard the contact call of a Rustic and then a
female flew up into a tree beside me before quickly vanishing. She was in an
area at least 50m away from the larger area where the male had been singing
which makes me wonder if she was paired with him or was breeding with another (now
silent) male. Despite searching, I never saw the female again or became wiser
as to how many birds there were. But who cares? I was just happy to encounter
this enigmatic species, hear its song and enjoy the magical habitat of marshy,
old spruce forest that it inhabits.
The
Ortolan Buntings are due to their habitat choice much, much easier to find. The
accepted wisdom is that they prefer peat bogs or regenerating areas of burnt
forest but the area where I have always seen them and which I believe holds the
highest remaining population is arable farmland on sandy soil with the birds
singing from lines of wind break trees. On this trip I had 6 males singing in
an area of less than 1 square kilometre with 4 males singing along one wind
break within 300mtres of each other.
So here are some
pictures of these two species (video will follow later in a separate post). The pictures are no way near as good as I have taken in previous years but the video will I hope be good. |
| 3cy+ male Rustic Bunting (vierspurv) singing above my head |
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| catching the first rays of morning sun |
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| presence of dead spruce trees seems to be an important habitat requirement |
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| the breeding area |
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| singing male Ortolan Bunting (hortulan) taken with the bazooka |
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| and taken with the superzoom |
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| this bird is better marked than the other bird meaning, I believe that this is a 3cy+ males whereas the other is a 2cy |
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| and this is the favoured habitat of Ortolan in Norway in 2016. 2 males sang on both the left and right side of the tractor tracks in the windbreak trees |
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