Green-winged Teal Svellet

21 April is a red letter day in the birding annals of Maridalen due to the Short-toed Lark I found on this date in 2016.  This year though there is little to suggest that a rarity of that magnitude will turn up any time soon. The northerly winds continue although some rain and hail this morning did cause an increase in the number of thrushes on the fields including my first Ring Ouzel of the year and numbers of Meadow Pipits were noticeably higher (around 50 in the valley).

Early in the morning the lake was still 50% frozen but by the end of the day is was all but ice free and this will result in more birds using the lake although with the strong northerly winds forecast for the next week it will not be easy viewing conditions.

Good birds do of course turn up as migration can only be paused and not stopped and today I successfully twitched an american Green-winged Teal at Svellet. This is perhaps the rarity I have had most luck finding myself with, prior to today, four of the five birds I have seen in Norway being self found. I have always thought that I would find one at Svellet as it attracts thousands of European Teal every spring and I always go through them when the light and distance allows. Kjell Isaksen had the honour of finding the bird though but it was nice to have an excuse to visit Svellet and see it. The experience was classic Svellet with the bird being so far out in bad light plus a strong wind shaking the telescope that I was at the maximum of what the telescope could manage. With 700 Teal to go through it also took a long time to find it but I felt lucky to as not everybody who tried managed to connect. At the same time as Teal numers have increased there has been a reduction in Curlew numbers to 100. The flock again contained a Barwit but this was a summer plumaged bird so was different to the one I saw last week. There were no other waders other than a handful of Oystercatcher and Lapwing and with the weather forecast as it is then other species may not arrive in numbers until out in May. The water levels are very low though so Svellet should remain attractive for waders for quite a long time.

See if you can see the G-w Teal (amerikakrikkand) in this video where I use the 260x digital zoom on the superzoom.

this was the best shot I managed with the Bazooka

and here is a screen shot from the video

the summer plumaged Barwit (lappspove), a male

my first Ring Ouzel (ringtrost) of the year, in Maridalen

and a Mistle Thrush (duetrost)