Déjà vu

I’m sticking to my routine and hence my blog post and pictures will give a sense of déjà vu. The Firecrest was not reported (nor indeed any Goldcrests) from Fornebu over the weekend despite a number of people looking so I didn’t need to work too much on my motivation to work on refinding it today. It is of course satisfying to find a skulky bird that evades others, but it is also a good way of keeping the birding senses sharpened – after all, if you can’t find a bird that you know to be there then what are the chances of finding anything else?

It wasn’t easy to find but I used the same tactic as on Friday. Follow up on any high-pitched call as there are not many birds in the area. Once the two Goldcrests and two Treecreepers that were in the area were localised then any other high-pitched call was likely to the bird. I wasted some time on a couple of calls that ended up being Blue Tits but eventually found the hot one. Yet again he was feeding low down and often dropping into the snow and was far from photogenic, but it was easy to follow his movements and food doesn’t seem to be an issue plus the forecast very cold snap never materialised (it only went down to -10C) so his chances of making it into 2018 look good.

A pair of Bearded Tits showed relatively well, and I caught a glimpse of one Water Rail and heard three others but otherwise there was little life.

a crest

male Firecrest

he really was difficult to photograph today

The Bearded Tits (skjeggmeis) were however a bit more cooperative

I'm not quite sure what they have found here but the male spent a long time feeding at the base of the snow