Sunday driving & twitching

A new Sunday tradition may be in the making with it becoming twitching Sunday in which Jr gets to practice her driving by driving me to a rare bird. The most important thing to make this into a tradition now is that rare birds continue to found on Sunday mornings… That did indeed happen yesterday (following on from the Cattle Egret last week) with the Baikal Teal being refound 13 days after it was discovered and it was reported to have come a long was out of eclipse plumage so sounded like it would be worth seeing again. Since I saw it last I have had it in mind when visiting Nordre Øyeren and Østensjøvannet and it was in Nordre Øyeren that it was refound. Not amongst flocks of shy Teal or Wigeon but amongst Mallards (again) although in its favour there were also Shoveler, Pintail, Wigeon and Teal associating with the same Mallards. It truly looked like a male Baikal Teal now although may need another two weeks to lose all traces of the eclipse plumage. Hopefully it will hang around for a bit although winter arrived in force today and my attempts to see it again were hampered by a blizzard.

I checked up on both the Wheatear and Tree Pipit yesterday morning and both were going strong despie it being -1C but the blizzard today seemed to have put an end to the Tree Pipit in Maridalen although it may just have been clever enough to hide away somewhere. The terrible weather will continue tomorrow but Wednesday should allow me to have a better search for it. Best bird in Maridalen was an Arctic Redpoll with a 100 strong flock of Common Redpolls (there was also at least 1 Lesser Redpoll amongst them) but rarest bird was House Sparrow with a pair amongst a 100 strong flock of Tree Sparrows. Have they been here all the time since I first saw some in August?). The sparrows were curiously finding something to eat in the snow on the road. I have no idea what it was and the road had not been salted so it was not that they were looking for. I have also put up some fat balls in the hope of attracting the female Grey-headed Woodpecker that has been seen a handful of times over the last week although not by me yet.

the Baikal Teal (gulkinnand) was a bit too distant to see well but using the bazooka with 600m lens and 10x digital zoom it was OK to film it

this is a screen grab from the video, and here is the video:

Today's Arctic Redpoll (polarsisik) - not often I see them in Oslo and even rarer in Maridalen

a Goshawk (hønsehauk) in the snow

Tree Sparrows (pilfink) finding nutrition in the snow on the road in Maridalen and there were 2 locally rare House Sparrows (gråspurv) with them

Tree Sparrows

there were also a few Yellowhammers (gulspurv) in the Dale. Could this be the winter to find something rarer amongst them?

The Tree Pipit (trepiplerke) on Sunday when it did look less energetic than the previous days

and its preferred area today when surprisingly enough I did not find it

The Wheatear (steinskvett) on Sunday. I reckon this bird will survive the snow a little bit longer than the pipit but did not look for it today

the Wheatear seemed curious about a Wren (gjerdesmett) that flew in

and the Wren was equally curious about the Wheatear. Both are insect eaters but the Wren searches in places the Wheatear doesn't or couldn't which may explain why it has evolved to stay in Oslo for the winter