Great White Egret in Maridalen!

I didn’t expect to be blogging again today but a mushroom trip turned into a bit more than that. Mrs OB and I took a trip up into Maridalen to look for chanterelle mushrooms and although I had bins and superzoom with me I wasn’t expecting to see much in the way of birds although had a hope to get a photo of one of the Rough-legged Buzzards that have been here a few days and which I saw very distantly yesterday.

We found a few mushrooms but whilst Mrs OB was being very thorough in her searching I sat down by the edge of the lake and had a scan for raptors. The scan continued along the waters edge on the other side of the lake and suddenly a white shape appeared at about 1km range. It was a toss up between rubbish or an egret and switching to the superzoom (which functions well as a telescope in emergency situations) I could see the yellow bill and black legs of a Great White Egret. Not just a year tick and Maridalen tick for me but also the first record in Oslo!! What makes it even more special was that the ONLY other bird I saw on the lake was a single Goldeneye. The water level has been reduced significantly over the last week (for reasons unknown) and the muddy edges probably suited the Egret well although I have to be honest and say that my hopes were pinned on a Dunlin (which would be a long overdue Maridalen bird for me).

The views I got were very long range so the photos are no good although with such a large and distinctive bird do qualify in the record shot category. It did a flyby at one stage but in the poor light (it had started raining) the shots were not as good as I hoped when looking through the viewfinder.

I put the news out and the bird was quickly twitched by a number of Oslo’s finest including Halvard who managed to see it from his house and then get down to where the bird was and get a rather nice shot (‘m not jealous….).

Great White Egret (egrethegre) at 1km range Maridalsvannet. A new bird for Oslo! 

and Halvard's picture....

a dirty twitcher - you know who you are ;-)

the delightful Mrs OB with some mushrooms which were enjoyed with Roast Lamb in the evening. It would be dificult to imagine a better autumn Sunday :-)