OSLO BIRDER: More Pygmy Owl

I’m not sure if I have mentioned it before but the Oslo Birder tribe has grown with the addition of OB K9. This was never something that Mr. OB wanted but the views of Mrs OB, OB Jr and OB Jr Jr won the day and we now have a 9 week old Finnish Lappdog doing #1s and #2s on the floor…

The only advantage I have identified so far with this addition (apart from the 3 other homo sapien members of the tribe being very happy) is that visits to Fornebu are very much on the cards as the fenced in dog area has been deemed to be a very good way of socializing Usko (which is his name although he will also answer to Barry if I am left alone with him for too long) with other beasts. This means that I can do some birding without anyone else complaining. Today this resulted in a couple of very late Chiffchaffs which both looked to be “normal” (i.e not tristis) although were in the exact same area as the tristis were up until the middle of November. It is amazing that they have survived the very cold temperatures of last week but we are now back to plus temperatures although it is wet and the days are short so they will do very well so survive much longer. They did not call at all which I take to be a sign that they did not wish to use unnecessary energy.

After this a detour on the way to the shop took me around Maridalen where the Pygmy Owl was showing very well although the light at 2.15pm was already very poor. I did however get so close that I could use the flash! At one point he flew about 100m over a field and briefly went down in the stubble although came up empty clawed. 100 or so Yellowhammers flew up though and I assume it was one of these he was after.