1 Jan 2022 Birding

1^st January is a day of much activity amongst birders. The instinct to make lists ensures that common and otherwise ignored birds such as Magpie, Hooded Crown, House Sparrow and of course Feral Pigeon see a spike in their recorded sightings as everyone puts them on their brand new year list.

It is not often that I get to go birding on New Year’s Day but I was determined to do so this year and joined Andreas G and Jack D for a very enjoyable day out. Total number of species was not the main target for the day with quality being more important than quantity but we were of course hoping for as long a list as possible. We started at 0830 and as I left the front door I heard Siskin which was a species I had to wait until 30^th March to record in 2021. Waxwing and then Pine Grosbeak were recorded at our first stop before we then racked up Little Grebe, Goshawk and Sparrowhawk amongst others. We then made what turned out to be a poor decision as to where to go next. We had spoken about heading north and east and maybe trying for Great Grey Owl amongst others but instead chose to head north and west to look for White-billed Diver. Half way into the drive we went over a hill top to be met by a sea of fog which was a real surprise given Oslo was just blue sky. We decided to head on hoping that we would come out under the fog but after 2 hours had to accept that the fog started at ground level…. Only one species (Yellowhammer) was added in that time and we made our way back to Oslo knowing we only had 2 hours of daylight remaining for us (it get dark before 4pm now).

Those 2 hours showed us that we should never have left the big smoke and we racked up many species including another Little Grebe, Kingfisher, Wigeon, Razorbill and Guillemot and finally 2 Water Rails to end up on 55 species for the day. If we had just stayed in Oslo and concentrated on maximising species then 60 would have been within reach and we wouldn’t have missed anything we didn’t see elsewhere.

9am and still 15 minutes til sunrise

Pine Grosbeaks (konglebit) before dawn

male Goosander (laksand) - this bird was with bread eating Mallards and had an identity crisis

adult male Goshawk (hønsehauk)

cold Grey Heron (gråhegre)

Little Grebe (dvergdykker) #1

Kingfisher (isfugl) - not many survive the winter in Norway

digiscoped

The Kingfisher was in the same area as our second Little Grebe of the day and also a Heron so there were clearly small fish to be had in the area. At one time it seemed like the Kingfisher may have been observing and following the grebe and perhaps the grebes actvities caused fish to move around and therefore visible to the Kingfisher? At one stage they engaged in synchronised diving.

the Kingfisher is perched high in a bush as the Little Grebe swims past

diving together

but they had different periods underwater and therefore lost points with the judges

afterwards the Kingfisher perched on a rock at the waters edge but seemed to be looking at the grebe