After Tuesday’s success with raptors I have expected even better raptor action over the last two days with conditions being in my mind better (a tail wind rather than head wind). The birds have not viewed things the same as me though and there has not really been any passage to write home about with one very notable exception – on Wednesday I saw not one but two Golden Eagles!
Before this year I had seen the species four times in Maridalen over the course of 20 years and now I have had three more birds in the space of two days!! The first bird was a young bird that drifted slowly over the valley. It could well be the same bird that I saw the day before (it had maybe roosted in the area after the snow storm) but there is no way of being sure. I manged better pictures on Wednesday and am quite sure they show a bird in its 2cy although ageing of eagles is a dark art that I am yet to master. The second bird I saw was a far more distant affair but looked to be an adult and is therefore likely to be one the birds that seem to have established themselves with the 300 km2 forest of Nordmarka but are only occasionally reported.
One very heart warming event of the last two days has been the arrival of divers. Yesterday a Red-throated Diver flew around calling but decided there wasn’t enough open water yet and today three Black-throated Divers were on the water. The lake is still around 98% frozen which means the water birds are relatively concentrated but the real movement of these birds won’t happen until lakes are ice free.
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| juvenile (2cy) Golden Eagle (kongeørn) gracing the skies over Maridalen |
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| a few Twite (bergirisk) are moving through still |
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| This Reed Bunting (sivspurv) has a very unusual plumage and would appear to ge a female with a lot of black on the face |
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| male Black Woodpecker (svartspett) |
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| judging by all the banging we could hear he was not yet finished with the internal building work |
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| Black-throated Diver (storlom) with a crayfish |
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| 4 Cranes (trane) coming into land |
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| Wood Pigeons (ringdue) don't waste any time |
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| it is still giving |
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