I felt robbed

The rain held off today although low clouds decked the hillsides around Maridalen so a Fab Four adventure was swapped out with a Maridalen expedition and that turned out to be a good choice. Maridalen was cooking with birds! It must have been good conditions for migration last night and the low cloud resulted in there being a lot of birds on the deck and in the air. There are a lot of Blue Tits and other forest birds on the move this autumn and although one notices these Blue Tit irruptions most at the coast there are without doubt a lot more in Maridalen now. There are also lots of Goldcrests, Meadow Pipits, Bramblings and Long-tailed Tits. With all these birds it felt the right time to dig out my first Maridalen Little Bunting or Yellow-browed Warbler. That delight will have to wait until a later date but with at least 4 Chiffchaffs it felt just unfair that there was not a Y-b Warbler.

6 Mistle Thrushes were a nice sight and 3 Skylarks that appeared calling out of the cloud were my first here since the early summer. I also heard a large flock of Pink-footed Geese in the cloud and would have loved to see them as a large gathering of P-fG at Hamar (north of Oslo) has included a Snow Goose and Lesser White-fronted Goose and these will most likely ended up migrating over the Oslo area.

There were still two Common Buzzards in the Dale and both appeared to be adult birds. It will be interesting to see how long they will stay as my latest record in the Dale is 18 October. On the lake 8 Common Goldeneye were not much to write home about but as there have only been 1 or 2 recently these show that diving ducks are now on the move. The juvenile Black-throated Diver now seems to have been abandoned by his parents but was successfully fishing so will hopefully make it.

thw white-headed Long-tailed Tits (stjertmeis) we get in Scandinavia are very smart birds

and Blue Tits (blåmeis) aren't too shaby either

the remaining Black-throated Diver (storlom)

part of a flock of 300 Brambling (bjørkefink) which had just been put up by a Sparrowhawk

Buzzard (musvåk) #1Add caption

and #2 which has very worn wing feathers

lots of Jays (nøtteskrike) around at the moment

when a pipit flies up silently and lands in a bush you always get excited even if 99% of the time it is a Meadow (heipiplerke)

4 Mistle Thrushes (duetrost). This species used to be scarce in the autumn but has started breeding in and around Maridalen and has become a far commoner species