OSLO BIRDER: Broad-billed Sandpipers and friends of the mountain marsh

Time now for the first instalment of my 24 hour birding and butterflying trip to the mountains and forests north of Oslo last week. The spur of the moment trip was spurred by the seemingly easy chance of seeing displaying Broad-billed Sandpipers accompanied by warm, sunny weather. I have seen quite a few BBS on passage and have seen them twice on their breeding grounds including once very closely but I have never seen or heard them displaying and it was almost bucket list desire. They normally breed on quite large and inaccessible bogs but evidence I had been sent to my phone suggested that the birds Per Christian had seen was anything but inaccessible. The location was a marsh at over 1100m and consequently way above the treeline which was not how I have pictured the preferred habitat for this species. The area is known to hold a number of other birds including Red-necked Phalaropes and my plan was to spend the night and experience lots of activity very early in the morning. I arrived in the early evening though and with it never getting truly dark I was able to bird straight away and to be honest hit the jackpot before bedtime.

The BBS did not quite live up to my expectations but I had it in its display flight on a number of occasions including low over my head but I never got to see it properly on the ground. Every time it finished a display flight it would plummet down into the marsh only about 20m from where I stood but then it would just vanish. Only once did I glimpse it on the ground and I think it was living up to its Norwegian name of Mountain Marsh Runner (fjellmyrløper). This video has a bit of its display flight including song.

Broad-billed Sandpiper (fjellmyrløper) in display flight

flight shots aren't getting any easier

Red-necked Phalaropes showed a lot better although it took me a long time to see them closely although they then performed very well. Although I think some birds had settled down to nest there was a group of females flying around, calling and seemingly looking for unpaired males.

female Red-necked Phalaropes (svømmesnipe)

at sunrise

do you see it?

Lapland Buntings were also present and 4 singing males makes this one of the best localities in southern Norway of a species that is declining fast. A lack of rodents meant that a single Kestrel was the ONLY raptor or owl I saw.