OSLO BIRDER: Good birds, bad pictures

After every blog post with good pictures of an exciting bird it seems like I am bound to follow up with a post with bad pictures of not so interesting birds. Well today’s post definitely has bad pictures to offer up but the birds were for once quite good. The movement of raptors over Maridalen that I had been waiting for finally came but instead of Rough-legged Buzzard and Merlin which I had been expecting I had Red Kite, Marsh Harrier, Hen Harrier, 5 Common Buzzards and 2 Kestrels! 😊

Things had started quietly although a very distant Slavonian Grebe that Halvard had found earlier was a good bird (this species turns up annually on the lake for a day or two every April). There was no sign of migration but I still had that good feeling that raptors would be on the move (they must be building up somewhere further south just waiting for the right conditions to push north). I relocated from Kirkeby to Nes where the farmer was tilling his field. A large flock of Common Gulls included some Black-headed but no Med or Ring-billed… A flock of 15 Curlew flew up from the waters edge and a flock of this size is definitely a good sighting in Maridalen. I followed them as they flew around and then headed north and suddenly they flew past a thermalling raptor. It was clearly a harrier but which one? It was distant and in appalling light but looked long and thin winged. I fumbled with the telescope and in the end tried to get photos although had to use manual focus. I did get it briefly in the scope but lighting was so bad I could see no plumage details but jizz wise I was getting a very Pallid feel. I couldn’t nail it though and hoped that my photos would help when I got home. As you will see the photos are not good but do show one wing with many feathers lost (due to moult?) but the left wing although looking to have a very slim "hand" does has 5 fingers so it was “just” a Hen Harrier.

Hen Harrier (myrhauk) the top right picture shows clearly 5 fingers on the left wing although the lower pictures show the long and thin winged jizz that had me thinking Pallied. Note also that the bird is missing feathers on the right wing probably due to moult

Right after this another flock of 12 Curlew flew north, 2 small flocks of Greylag Geese flew north and 3 Cranes flew lazily around. There was suddenly a very good feeling about the day. I decided to decamp to north in the valley where I knew I could get a good view in many directions and where I also hoped that a harrier might stop to hunt. It turned out I chose a good watch point, found some good birds but if I had stayed where I was then I could also have got some good photos. I had at least 5 Common Buzzard which included the local pair and had at one time four in the air alongside a Kestrel (of which I had two). Best birds though were first a female Marsh Harrier which came from the SE. I watched it circling at around 1.8km range over where I had been earlier and it was suddenly joined by a Red Kite!! Both birds disappeared quickly whilst I had to contend with an impatient dog but I did manage a sort of record shot of the Kite. Both birds would have ended up coming much close to me if they continued on their original course but seemed to head back south again.

an impressively bad picture of a Red Kite (glente) but the top left shot shows the deeply forked tail and the pale broad stripe on the top of the wing. The bottom right picture shows very little!

After this it quickly went dead. There were hundreds of gulls playing around in the sky above the lake which made it difficult trying to pick out raptors but 2 Cranes heading NW stood out enough to be noted.

Here is my eBird checklist from today: https://ebird.org/checklist/S67342428