One day to go

My favourite birding day of the year is tomorrow and it looks like it may be the day of days (alternatively it will be a literal wash out). The May 1^st bank holiday always gives me a chance for an early start and a long day in Maridalen and this year we are forecast rain (or perhaps snow…) with a southerly wind. Could it be better? Well ideally it would be warmer and the spring more advanced such that there were more migrants already moving. This spring is late with the lake still over 90% frozen, the fields brown and hardly any leaves on trees. In terms of number of species seen my Oslo year list is now 129 species compared to 136 in 2022, 134 in 2021 and 136 in 2020.

I have hardly seen any summer migrants although did this morning add Tree Pipit and Common Sandpiper in Maridalen. It was -2C as I drove into the Dale at 6am but it was sunny and didn’t feel that cold. There was a real lack of migrants in the air on the fields though and I quickly decided to go searching for Three-toed Woodpeckers. The first places I checked came up blank but eventually I found two birds drumming close to each other and saw a male quite well

Yesterday, I paid an afternoon visit to Østensjøvannet to see two scarce local birds in the form of Smew and Slavonian Grebe. Both of these are species I would hope to see at this time on Maridalsvannet but the ice will surely mean that they won’t be seen there this year.

Maridalen this morning at 0635. If you look closely you can see there is a line of ice free water running along the right hand side of the lake but otherwise it is ice we see

pair of Buzzards (musvåk) in Maridalen

a back lit Kestrel (tårnfalk)

and 2 male Kestrels together

a surprise spring encounter with a Nutcracker (nøttekråke)

a distant encounter with a Slavonian Grebe (horndykker) at Østensjøvannet

and a slightly closer Smew (lappfiskand)

male Three-toed Woodpecker (tretåspett)