OSLO BIRDER: Guess what?

There is lots more action on the Pine Grosbeak front and although I keep thinking I have posted enough there is always something new to report or another pictures that is perhaps better than a previous one….

I have previously written how I was interviewed last Wednesday for the Norwegian Radio station P1. Well the next day the sister station P3 (a much younger target audience) had a rather long piece making fun of the previous days interview with the main theme being that birdwatchers must be hiding something and you can’t trust them. I challenged (on Facebook) Markus, the amusing but slightly mouthy presenter, to come out with me to find out what I was hiding. This caused some more amusement on the Friday morning show but Markus rose to the challenge (after some goading from his two co-presenters) and today he and a cameraman met me for some live radio (you might, like me, wonder why a camera is needed for radio but there was talk of putting a video out on the world wide intraweb but they have published this picture on Instagram). It all went very well and Markus proved to be slightly more interested in birds than his radio persona had let on. And, yes we saw Pine Grosbeaks 😊

Some more news on the Piney front is that Stig Mr Grosbeak Kalvatn found a ringed bird on Tuesday (which I then saw yesterday). With the help of good pictures the ring was seen to be Finnish with the code P389925. Stig duly reported it and got the answer that it is the furthest control for a Finnish ringed Grosbeak and had travelled 1080km after being ringed on 9 April this year. The bird would have been ringed before the breeding season so this does not tell us where this years invasion birds have originated from as it could well still have been migrating further north or east when ringed. I have previously seen a ringed Grosbeak in Oslo but my pictures that time did not allow any information to be gleaned. It is very rare that a photo allows a number to be read off these tiny metal rings (the large colour rings on gulls are something else) but the confiding nature of the Grosbeaks means they are close enough for high res pictures to be taken.

Markus and Daniel from NRK P3 Morgen with a flock of Pine Grosbeak in the rowan tree behind them

a new selfie with a Piney

the ringed male Pine Grosbeak

and here I have managed to read off the code as being P389925 MEUM (?) ZOOL. FINLAND

the ringing data

And here are some picture of birds other than Pine Grosbeak. I do have a lot of new Grosbeak pictures which I reckon are better than I've taken before but I'll post those later.