Daytime Long-eared Owl

On Friday and Saturday I had the joy of guiding Bruce and Janet around Oslo including a whole 8 hours in Maridalen on Friday. I found 16 lifers for Bruce including Three-toed Woodpecker, Rb Fly, Goshawk, Icterine Warbler and Water Rail.

On Sunday morning after a much needed good night’s sleep I was making my wake up coffee and received a message from Reidar Myhre that he had found a Gull-billed Tern at Årnestangen! I briefly entertained the idea of going for this really good Norwegian rarity (the first record in Oslo and Akershus and one of only a very few records that have not been single observor undocumented flybys at unlikely seawatching locations..) but the minimum of 3 hours needed to get to see it plus my dislike for twitching meant I passed on the opportunity (I had instead a particularly nice day with family and friends instead) but I did pass on the news onto the local Band group. Far twitchier people than myself were on the scene in record time (or standing 1.5km away and stretching the definition of tickable views...”it’s the third white bird from the left”..).  The bird was watched by a steady array of admirers until after 9pm and with heavy rain overnight I had high hopes that both it and some newly arrived birds would be on site this morning. 

That of course was not to be though. The Little Gull was back after having not been noted yesterday but a Long-eared Owl hunting openly at 11:30 was the highlight for me (there are 4 large youngsters needing to be fed so the adults have their work cut out). It was first hunting over a field in Short-eared Owl style and that was originally thought it might be but when it perched and I was able to see it better then its true identity became clear.

Long-eared Owl (hornugle)

exciting times :-)