A sea gaze with a result of sorts

Yesterday it blew again from the south so I gave sea gazing a go again. Two young Little Gulls battling into the wind were my reward which I must admit was better than I had hoped for but otherwise there were no birds that seemed to have been blown in. I watched from Torkildstranda by Drøbak which allowed me to sit warm and dry (it was bucketing it down at times) in the car and may become my new go to sea gazing spot. In the video you will see the bird flying past a couple of windsurfers. When it blows around Oslo and you decide to sea faze you can almost guarantee that you will also see wind surfers but very few other people. Birds and wind surfers must be the only people who scour weather forecasts looking for storms.

the first 1cy Little Gull (dvergmåke)

the second

and my sea gazing position

The Pygmy Owl in Maridalen showed in the rain as it tried to shelter by the trunk of a tree. It was really wet and looked very unhappy with one eye open and the other closed.

the damp Pygmy Owl (spurveugle) here using the flash which highlights how wet its head is

very bedraggled

Three videos - the first is a long edit of it in the rain and the other two short clips showing specific beahviour

The Marsh Tit continues to show well and continues to do very little to give itself away. A hybrid was documented genetically (a world first!) on the other side of Oslo from 2020 - 2023 and I guess this bird could possibly also be a hybrid (based purely on it giving the species specific call so infrequently) but I see nothing in the plumage to suggest so. Marsh Tit is declining all around Oslo so the chance of hydridisation will probably increase if lone birds do not find a mate. In my previous post I wrote that the closest population to Oslo was in Lørenskog but no birds have actually been reported from here since 2018 illustrating the decline of the species.

I keep attempting to take good comparison pictures of the two species and am perhaps getting slightly better at:

both the Willow Tit (granmeis) on the left and the Marsh Tit (løvmeis) are nearly in focus although it would have been nice if both were in profile

darn twig

and if you can't get them right next to each other in the view finder there is always photoshop

and the Marsh Tit on its own

From next week we are forecast to have negative temperatures and perhaps snow which will hopefully shake up things on the bird front.