No stoning in Oslo today

Well, the twitches were difficult to control and I found myself heading this morning to Gressholmen hoping to get stoned. Not to be, unfortunately, as the STONEchat was nowhere to be found. My hour on the island plus hour on the boat as it stopped at the other islands was a nice trip ;-) though but there weren't too many birds.

Shelduck, Oystercatcher, Grey Wagtail, Skylark, Starling and my first migrant Chaffinch (I had a single wintering bird earlier in the Botanical Garden) were all nice to see though. As a sign of how quiet things were I found myself photographing a Hooded Crow…

I saw a tweet from Lee Evans Evans (you know when someone is notorious when there are spoof Twitter accounts in their name but this is the Real Lee Evans!) today that a UK ringer has lost his licence for 6 months for intentionally targeting a rare bird.

Hats off to the BTO for reacting and something for Norwegian ringers and the relevant authorities to take note of. I have for a long time now been trying to engage with those who have power over ringing in Norway to try to get some rules and ethics in place but I am normally met with blank stares and a lack of any understanding that there is any issue. Norway is poles apart from the UK when it comes to ringing or at least with how it is managed. There are basically no rules once you have a licence (which are handed out surprisingly widely - no age limit for an A licence) and for the majority of ringers it is the targeting of rare birds that is the motivation for becoming a ringer!

Hooded Crow (kråke) 

male Red-breasted Merganser (siland)

a Common/Harbour Seal (steinkobbe) with Fornebu in the background 

male Shelduck (gravand) which was "singing"

A video of a drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker (flaggspett) from today

and a video from yesterday with singing Great Grey Shrike (varsler) and the Taiga Beans