The mountains in autumn

This week is autumn half term school holiday in Norway and a week when any self respecting birder finds himself on an island (usually Utsira) looking for the wing bars and eye stripes that are the hallmarks of rare vagrant birds. I must be lacking in self respect as I have never found myself on an island during this week (blame it on kids who don’t like birds) and this week we were in the mountains at Beitostølen. This was our first autumn trip here so I was interested to see what the birdlife would be like.

The drive up revealed rowan trees weighed down with berries the whole way and the reason was that flocks of thrushes were still gorging themselves on the tree line and have not begun moving south yet.

The cabin we were staying at was lower down than usual at 700m and bordering onto forest. I hoped for Sibe Jay, owls and woodpeckers. I did have Tengmalm’s Owl and Grey-headed Woodpecker but the only sibe I had was a YELLOW-BROWED WARBLER!! Wings bars and eye stripes had come to me and suddenly I couldn’t care less about islands or lack of them! This species is very scarce in Norway this autumn - Kjell is on Værøy now and hasn’t seen one - so for one to turn up here was very unexpected. It did not call once so I was very lucky to focus on it as a roving mixed flock went past me.

Trips on to Valdresflye revealed snow over 2000m but even lower down at 1400m there were far fewer birds than I had expected. A single Meadow Pipit was the only passerine (I had wondered wherher there would be Snow Buntings and Shore Larks) and a small flock of Dunlin flying over the only waders. The lakes held six species of duck though with Scaup and Long-tailed Ducks the highlights and an indication of successful breeding for what are now rare breeding birds in the south of the country. Interestingly puddles were full of crane fly larvae so there was an food source if more waders had been around.

I am writing this on the mobile and the photos have come out in the wrong order so you will have to scroll past landscape and Beast pictures to get to the birds 😂

This Meadow Pipit (heipiplerke) was the only passine I encounted on Valdresflye

I was hoping for Siberian Jay but got a real Sibe instead! Yellow-browed Warbler (gulbrynsanger)

The crown stripe was surprisingly obvious on this bird

This Merlin (dvergfalk) was the only raptor on Valdresflye and a surprise given the lack of passerines

Two 1cy male Scaup (bergand) together with a male Tufted Duck (toppand)

These larvae of a species of crane fly (stankelbein) were in every puddle

This Chiffchaff (gransanger) was in the same area as the Yb Warbler and was also completely silent

Postscript:

After I wrote this blog post we went on a final walk which gave me 4 Siberian Jays in the same area as my summer sightings as well as a Green Woodpecker in spruce forest at 800m which must be an extreme sighting for this species.

Siberian Jay (lavskrike)

Green Woospecker (grønnspett)