Sibes on Værøy good, Sibes at home best!

It is one thing travelling to Værøy and finding Sibes but it is something completely different to find them around Oslo. On Saturday Jack and I had an early morning trip to Fornebu and I was hoping to find (I am described at home as a naïve optimist..) Little Bunting, Yellow-browed Warbler and/or Olive-backed Pipit. Rather surprisingly this did not happen and we had to make do with a few Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps.

I am an optimist though and on Monday I was again at Fornebu in lovely crisp autumnal weather with ice on puddles following the first two nights with frost and there was an obvious arrival of birds especially thrushes. Lots of calling Song Thrushes had me thinking of Little Bunting but suddenly amongst the calls of Redwings I heard a call that on Værøy would have been an in the bag Olive-backed Pipit. It called again but I could not see it flying over and that was is it. OBP has never been recorded in Oslo & Akershus and a call only record will not be enough to add it to the list but a fun if brief and frustrating experience it was.

Today was far less infuriating though as I saw a Yellow-browed Warbler! Also at Fornebu it was proof that you don’t go birding with Jack if you want to find something scarce 😊 This bird did not call at all whilst I watched it which is the same experience with the two other birds I have found in south eastern Norway whereas birds on Værøy which are usually very freshly arrived can call a lot and this is how you usually find them.

Fornebu gave good views of Bearded Tits and Kingfisher (but again not when you are with Jack) so Simon was a happy birder.

To top it all I was out last night owling which made me even happier and will merit its own post soon.

Yellow-browed Warbler (gulbrynsanger) at Fornebu!

I engaged in a lot of pishing to try to bring the warbler closer but all it did was bring Goldcrests (fuglekonge) closer but they are nice too :-)

and this juvenile Siskin (grønnsisik) was also interested

I don't think pishing works on Kingfishers (isfugl)

and it may work on Bearded Tits (skjeggmeis) although I can't remember ever trying

this late Queen of Spain Fritillary (sølvkåpe) was a real surprise on Monday as it followed 2 nights of frosts and I thought the butterfly season would be over. It looks to be a quite fresh individual