Dotterel

And indeed I was watching lekking Great Snipe on Friday night! We took advantage of the long weekend (Monday was a bank holiday in Norway) and went to Beitostølen with friends. I of course fitted in some (but not too much) birding and had two visits to the Great Snipe lek plus a couple of visits to the plateau at Valdresflye.

The Great Snipe were very active with 4-5 males both nights and the first display starting at 2240 although not really getting properly going until 2315. After only having had a single male last year it was a relief to see more males and lots of activity this year. I am happy with the photos and video I took and will have a post on them soon (have a number of gigabytes to go through).

Dotterel also showed very well including when the girls and dog were with me.

Even though this year is clearly not a rodent year and the only raptors seen were Kestrel and Sparrowhawk at the tree line I did have a single Long-tailed Skua on the plateau which was probably just passing through and checking out the (un)suitability of the area. The lakes in the mountains were still frozen but lower down I had Scaup and Long-tailed Duck which were patiently waiting to be able to move up to their breeding sites. Willow Grouse, Ptarmigan, Shore Lark were all new for the year and other goodies were Temminck’s Stint, Common Scoter, Ring Ouzel, Bluethroat, Cuckoo, Redstart and Snow Bunting. Rarest bird though was probably a Skylark singing at 1400m!

I’ll show Dotterel pictures today and will probably have two or three other posts to show everything else with one devoted to the Great Snipes.

initial view were a bit foggy but quickly improved

even a bit of back lit photography