A long, intense and very fun and successful weekend is now
long over and I have a lot of memories to digest. Although we were there for 3
days nearly all the birding action occurred during the course of 18 hours on
Saturday spent primarily around Valdresflye.
Absolute highlight was an adult Gyr Falcon which was my
first in around 20 years of visiting the area! We also had multiple Golden
Eagles and Rough-legged Buzzards, male Hen Harrier, Dotterel, Temminck’s Stint,
Shore Lark, Siberian Jay, Slavonian Grebe, Lapland and Snow Buntings, Velvet
and Common Scoter and Long-tailed Duck.
Spring had come early at slightly lower elevations where ice
and snow had already melted and everything was already very green but up on
Valdresflye (over 1300m) there was still quite a lot of snow and the lakes were
frozen meaning birds were still easy to find. Early on Saturday morning with
sun and no wind we had a great time with displaying waders and passerines – the
number of species may be small but they are all wonderful. Then around 0845 we
had a brief but fantastic raptor showing which included Rough-legged Buzzard
mobbing Golden Eagle and Merlin mobbing Gyr Falcon! That we saw so many raptors
was a surprise as it was clearly not a rodent year which was evidenced by just
a handful of Kestrels and no owls or Long-tailed Skuas and few grouse.
Once again we failed to find Red-necked Phalaropes although
that didn’t stop us stopping at countless marshes which I declared to be
prefect for the species…
A worrying feature of the trip was how scarce Lapland
Bunting seems to have become and we had only 2 singing and seemingly unpaired
males plus a heard only fly over.
On the Saturday we went to “my” Great Snipe lek at 9pm
expecting full activity in still good light as has been my experience early in
the season previously. Instead, we had nothing and decided to leave at 10pm.
This is my first blank visit since I discovered the lek in 2012 and was a real
disappointment and also worrying in terms of why the birds were not there. It
is possible that we left too early although I doubt that and the area around
the lek looks no different to previous years although in the general
Beitostølen area cabin building and “development” continues apace.
As we left the (former?) lek we were all tired and a bit
despondent as this was not how we had intended to end a long day and as I drove
us the 45 minutes back to the cabin I could only think of a cold drink and bed.
As we approached the cabin though I felt a sudden increase in energy and
suggested we check out the lek Conor and I discovered in 2021 but which had
been empty when we visited last year. We stopped the car and bang! we could
hear them from over 100m away. We walked closer and there was LOADS of
activity. There were 6+ males, a few presumed females, fighting, courting and
birds flying in circles around us that made us dizzy watching. It was now quite
dark and we just enjoyed the experience rather than trying to get photos.
Having filled our boots we drove back to the cabin with the windows open and
less than 5 minutes from the cabin we found another lek right by the road and
with a cabins within 100m on 3 sides!!! This also had a number of birds
displaying and lots of noise.
I took way over 1000 images but thankfully(?) no video but
it has still taken a long time to go through everything.
I will start with raptors. The images are pretty sketchy as the
birds were always distant (even if they looked close in the telescope) but they
were the best birds of the trip.
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| an adult Gyr Falcon (jaktfalk) flying towards us at around 1500moh - just as I've long dreamed of finding one |
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| it would have been nice if it came a bit closer but it did look good in the scope |
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| Rough-legged Buzzard (fjellvåk) - this is an adult male as shown by the barred tail |
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| same bird |
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| same bird |
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| and same bird when in different light it looks browner |
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| another bird - this one seemingly an adult female |
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| the adult male hovering |
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