Pine Grosbeaks - Taiga magic in Oslo!

After period of wind and rain it was great to wake up today to cloud, no wind and no rain. If I lived on the coast I would have gone bashing mile up mile of coastal vegetation and woodland looking for excting visitors from Siberia. Given that I live in Oslo that wasn’t on the cards but such weather is great for walking in the forests as it makes hearing the few birds that are there much easier.

This time though there were a lot of birds to hear and see. It all started off very well when after less than ten minutes, and whilst concentrating very hard on not getting wet as I crossed a stream on a flimsy plank, I heard the distinctive sound of a Pine Grosbeak. I have not seen any records so far to suggest that there is an invasion of this species into southern Norway but it is around now that they should start turning up so I had this species on my radar. I quickly played the call from my phone, got a response and was able to locate the bird. I only saw the one bird to start with but then three other flew in and then when a Sparrowhawk had a go at them a total of 11 flew out of the trees! Although they didn’t seem to fly far I was unable to relocate them but did hear at least one bird about a kilometre away later on. My winter is made if we do have an invasion of this species and hopefully they will be found eating rowan berries in the city rather than the shoots on spruce trees deep in the forest (which is how I normally encounter them).

There were also lots of Crossbills in the trees and flying over and whilst most were Common I also had a few Parrot and later in the day a Two-barred in Maridalen. In fact I did well for finches today with in total 11 species (and that didn’t include Chaffinch).

I felt very happy with my Pine Grosbeak encounter (this being one of my alltime favourite species and a classic taiga species) and subsequently didn’t feel the need to traipse too far in the forests. I consequently found no grouse species but did have two Three-toed Woodpeckers and Nutcracker and was pretty darn pleased with my outing 😊

Four Pine Grosbeaks (konglebit)

the same 4. Three birds are either females or young birds but the hidden bird in the middle was a nice red male - if only he had sat at the top of the tree!

they have a quite distinctive silhouette in flight

female Three-toed Woodpecker (tretåspett) which started drumming and was answered by a distant bird

I only managed a photo of Common Crossbill (grankorsnebb)

it is always much more exciting to find a Nutcracker deep in a dark forest than in your garden in Oslo

male Pintail (stjertand) coming out of eclipse on Akerselva

the black plastic ring shows this to be an escape from captivity. There is another escaped Pintail with a similar ring in Drammen so someone is not looking after the "pets" properly