Warming up at Svellet

We are now entering that time of the year when my loyalty to the Dale gets truly tested and I split my birding time between the Dale and Nordre Øyeren and especially the mighty Svellet.

A trip there this morning gave a taste of things to come and the extensive mudflats hosted 230 Curlew which were both an impressive sight and sound. A single Bar-tailed Godwit amongst them was a good bird but the only other waders were singles of Lapwing, Oystercatcher and Green Sandpiper. In two to three weeks time things will be very different with hundreds, if not thousands, of Greenshank and Wood Sandpipers and smaller numbers of many other species. 92 Teal were dabbling away and numbers of this species will also increase at least ten fold in the coming weeks.

Currently all the ducks are in Snekkervika where viewing conditions are difficult (not that they are usually much better at Svellet). A visit here produced around 1500 Teal and also Wigeon, Mallard and 4 Pintail but attempts to find anything scarcer came up blank. There were also waders here with 24 Curlew, 9 Lapwing, 6 Oystercatcher and 9 Green Sandpipers. Eight of the sandpipers were feeding together on an open mudflat and when you see them in this unexpected way then it is easy to understand the true identity of the (too) early (and undocumented) reports of Wood and Common Sandpipers that we get every year. We will still have to wat a bit for these other sandpipers to turn up by which time the Green Sandpipers will have mostly moved into the forest marshes where they breed.

Whilst out my phone plinged with a message of a Glaucous Gull at the recycling plant in Oslo. A few years ago I visited this site quite often when I was trying to get interested (and more knowledagble) in gulls but this winter I visited just once. It really isn’t a pleasant place to stand with bins and a camera but I decided to pop in on my way home as it was on the way. Luckily this twitch went exactly to plan and no unnecessary time was spent there after the bird was spotted almost immediately. Result!

The day had started early getting the tyres on the car changed to summer plumage and whilst waiting outside (because of Covid I couldn’t wait inside on the sofa enjoying a cup of coffee) I had first some Redwing and then a Crane fly over so I really thought there would be lots of new birds today but that wasn’t the case unfortunately. What we need now is some rain as all the fields are brown but the weather forecast for the next week is just for sun and northerly winds so there will be no big arrivals of birds. Overnight frosts seem to be a thing of the past though so the ice on Maridalsvannet should start melting fast – it is still 97% frozen but things can change very quickly.

The mighty mudflats at Svellet

Maridalsvannet is still mostly frozen but there is now a growing ice free area at Hammeren

2cy Glaucous Gull (polarmåke) hiding behind a Great Black-back and looking very small in comparison.

looking a bit more brutish here

my first Comma (hvit C) butterfly of the year

an adult male Goshawk (hønsehauk) in Maridalen which was a long way from either of the nests I know of but I have long suspected there maybe another pair in the Dale