A new guiding Threesome

 Today I was guiding Aron from Canada but now living in Oslo. Aron had a list of birds he wanted to see plus a desire to get to know some of the best birding areas a bit better. As it is November there is not a lot of variety to see but I was able to point out the best places for birding in the spring plus of course try to find the best birds that are currently on offer. I have clearly pleased the Bird Gods – perhaps my eye injury was some sort of sacrifice to them – because the good birds just kept on coming and coming. A morning’s birding gave us a flock of Pine Grosbeak down to 2 metres, a pair of Hazel Grouse feeding on the ground only a few metres from us for a long period of time and to wrap things up a Pygmy Owl also at very close range. On top of this we had 5 species of tit including Crested, Brambling, Dipper and Sparrowhawk amongst others.

Before Covid came to haunt us in the winter of 19/20 I was able to guide a stream visiting birders to my “Taiga Trio” of Pine Grosbeak, Great Grey Owl and Hawk Owl. Post(ish) Covid maybe I can show a small trickle of birders a new Taiga threesome of PG, HG & PO.

Pine Grosbeak (konglebit)

Pygmy Owl (spurveugle)

Hazel Grouse (jerpe)

and a few more pictures of them all

the male HG which seemed to be picking up sand

PG

two very different plumaged birds. The back one is an advanced 1st winter male whilst the close bird is also a 1st winter and presumably a female

the 1st w male

1st w male again

and presumed 1st w female (no red feathers coming through)

PO

at one stage the owl became very alert and started moving its tail about

A few pictures from Thursday when a weasel ran over the road and Black and Green Woodpeckers showed themselves

Black Woodpecker (svartspett) in silhouette

Green Woodpecker (grønnspett)

Weasel (snømus) in its white winter coat. This is only the second or third time I can remember seeing one and they really are tiny!