It's been wet!

This last week has been a wet one! Southeastern Norway has been hit by the extreme weather “Hans” and it really has rained a lot and there has been a lot of flooding. Nordre Øyeren is over 2 metres higher than normal and all of Årnestangen is under water with the birding platform just above the water. This of course means no mudlfats or waders and it may also mean that the whole autumn wader season there is washed out as it will take a long time for water levels to fall again. The floods do seem to have pushed Great White Egrets out from hidden feeding areas as three birds suddenly appeared.

After the rains stopped a visit to Maridalen was suddenly very autumnal with the first Yellow Wagtails and a Bluethroat and a lot of Whinchats. A juvenile Cuckoo was also a less than annual sighting here.

There has been very little weather suitable for butter or dragonfly watching but on Thursday it was sunny and a visit to Fornebu gave a number of sightings of Brown Hairstreaks plus the final two butterflies that I thought I had a chance of seeing this year – Wall Brown and Painted Lady (there have been very few in Norway this year) which takes me to 61 species for the year.

Otherwise my time has been spent following up on two late, scarce breeding birds which I will of course write about later in the autumn.

Sparrowhawk (spurvehauk) and Cuckoo (gjøk) in Maridalen. This picture shows just how alike the two species are and why they confuse both birds and birders alike

and with a Swallow (låvesvale)

the Cuckoo. This bird is a juvenile (the adults are long gone) and as the species has become very rare as a breeding bird around Oslo has most likely come from further north

a distant view of a Great White Egret (egretthegre)

young Bluethroat (blåstrupe) still with a few juvenile feathers

on young birds that lack blue on the throat it is the red on the tail that is the most colourful part of the bird

I again saw three Ospreys (fiskeørn) together over Maridalen and they flew around for a long time. All were adults and not necessarily the same as last time as this bird does not seem to match any of the 3 in my last post 

this Roe Deer buck at Fornebu was unusually confiding but to live here they have to accept the close presence of humans

there are not many butterflies still on the wing (and 2 dasys of heavy rain would have taken its toll) but Silver-washed Fritillaries can still be found in the right places. This one looks quite fresh

but this one has wing damage and discolouration

the underside of a female Brown Hairstreak (slåpetornstjertvinge)

and here is a male with a much duller underwing

upperwing of a male

and a female

Wall Brown (sørringvinge)

a toad (nordpadde)

young Whinchat (buskskvett) in Maridalen still with white tipped juvenile feathers

and a juvenile Whitethroat (tornsanger)

Osprey in Maridalen

a juvenile Heron flying over in Maridalen. There have been a few records of a juvenile and adults to suggest that they have bred in the Dale or somewhere very close. I am not aware of any previous breeding records in Oslo