The day that kept on giving

4^th August, was a particularly good Oslo birding day. After my successful shift of romantic allegiances to Fru. Galteskjær gave me a Little Stint I did not expect to have any more birding of note. When the rain stopped in the early afternoon though I decided to have a quick trip to Maridalen primarily to follow the progress of the breeding Hobbies but also of course to see if anything had turned up on the lake. Heavy rain in early autumn is the type of weather that may produce an interesting tern or gull and with water levels now having fallen enough to expose a tiny bit of mud in places maybe a wader.

First stop was as always at Hammeren and as I got out of the car my Band app plinged telling me a scarce bird had been sighted somewhere (I am a member of many county groups so it was not necessarily a local bird). I did not immediately check the message but instead scanned the lake without seeing much. It was only then that I checked the message and there was a Black Tern at Kirkeby!!! The finder was of course Knut Waagen who found the previous one here and has a solid track record of rares and scarces.

I made my way there quickly and there it was - a juvenile Black Tern and only my second ever in both Oslo and Maridalen and #oslo2024 species number 192!! This makes this year my best ever and only eight away from the 200 that I have always previously considered a flying pig type of goal.

 

An attentive reader of this blog will have noticed that I went from #oslo2024 189 (Turnstone) to 191 (Little Stint) without mentioning #190. Well that was no less than a Golden Eagle with an adult seen distantly from Maridalen thermalling over Lillomarka on Friday. Histrorically this would be a very strange record but with a pair now established in Nordmarka it must be expected that there will be occasional sightings of adults at any time of the year close to the city.

a nice fresh juvenile Black Tern (svartterne). The closest breeders are in Sweden but it may have come from further afield

2 images of same bird. It's appearance changed a lot dependent on the light and at a distance in the bright sunlight it looked almost white

Halvard sent me this image that he took from his balcony at a range of nearly 4km!! I am wearing the red T shirt. Although Halvard was able to twitch me I think the tern proved just a bit too small