A week in the Dale

Maridalen on Friday revealed slightly fewer birds than on Thursday but I did have more variety with four species of warbler in total: Garden & Willow plus Chiffchaff and Blackcap. There were also three Wheatears plus Pied Flycatcher, Whinchat, Bluethroat and Yellow Wagtail. My eBird app tells me that I had a total of 71 species in Maridalen last week which feels like a very good total especially when you consider that there was only 1 species of wader (Common Snipe) and few water birds in general.

Highlight on Friday though was Common Buzzards. I had a few sightings of singles before seeing a family party of 5 together. After losing these I then spotted two very high above me which soon became five and were then joined by another five and all ten then circled so high that they disappeared into the cloud. I later had another couple of single before again seeing a family party of five at close range. This season has definitely been good for Common Buzzards locally but a lack of Honey Buzzard sightings this week suggests that things havn’t gone so good for them (in most years this would be period when I had most sightings).

The first family group of Common Buzzards (musvåk)

7 of 10 birds that circled very high and disappeared into the cloud

three birds from the final sighting of a group of five. Left and right shows juveniles and top is an adult

Tree Pipit (trepiplerke) - spot the differences to the Meadow Pipit (heipiplerke) in yesterday's post

relatively short back claw

the back claw is so short (relative) that it is not as obvious as it is on Meadow Pipit

a Reed Bunting (sivspurv)

Tree Sparrow (pilfink)

Wheatears (steinskvett) on the church ruins

Willow Warbler (løvsanger)