DIRE

It is not often that I have such a long gap between blog posts but the weather has been so bad this week that birding has just been a waste of time. After temperatures fell to -14C last week we have had a rapid increase to plus temperatures which has bought first fog and now the last two days rain! Winter seems like a distant memory at the moment.

Yesterday afternoon and today winds rose to storm force in the fjord and were directly from the south something which was surely going to result in some seabirds so I thought I would give Krokstrand a go. I didn’t hurry down though as heavy rain was forecast first thing. As I drove down there was a sign saying the ferry from Moss to Horten was not running. I assume this was because of the wind and was a promising start. When I arrived at Krokstrand the waves were high but that was as good as it got! There was no movement of birds AT ALL. I gave it 45 minutes but didn’t even have a single auk. I had also hoped there might be some white winged gulls to find as there have been a few on the south and west coasts so I checked a number of places where there are normally lots of Herring Gulls but they were not many of them to see either. The rain and wind made looking for Hawk Owls pointless. I checked out the Inner Oslo Fjord on the way back and had nothing here either and was feeling that this could well go down as the worst days birding EVER.

The only consolation was the Great Grey Shrike in Maridalen (which I thought had departed) and apart from three Crows this was the only bird I saw in the Dale. DIRE.