Despite me posting a part 1 of my summary of the year it isn’t
over quite yet and I have managed to fit in some birding around festive and
family activities. On the 22nd I guided Emily and Diane from
California for a very cold and crisp couple of hours at Huk, Bygdøy. We had a
good haul of typical species with Purple Sandpipers headlining.
And today I saw one of the Maridalen Pygmy Owls for the first
time in over a month and although I think food is hard for it to find I did see
it with rodent in its claws.
We suddenly had a change in the weather just before Christmas
with temperatures falling below zero and with no wind ice immediately formed in
the bays at Fornebu. We also got the thinnest layer of snow on Christmas Eve so
had a white Christmas too.
Maridalsvannet always takes a long time to freeze over but
has started freezing over in the bays and there is a chance it will mostly freeze
over before the New Year (when in a normal winter it will definitely be frozen)
although I suspect it may take a bit longer.
Pygmy Owl (spurveugle) in the Dale
Cormorants (storskarv) at Huk
and Purple Sandpipers (fjæreplytt) same place
Waxwings (sidensvans) are still in the area where I live and a couple joined Fieldfares that were eating wind fallen apples in the garden
Dausjøelva in Maridalen on 27th Dec
and looking over Nesbukta on the 26th with the first ice forming
2025 hasn’t felt like a particularly exciting year and I can
easily list off the fairly common species I haven’t seen such as Fulmar
(how is that even possible?!?), Yellow-browed or Grasshopper Warbler, any white
winged gulls, Great Northern or White-billed Divers. However, I have clearly
had a fairly good year because my total of 245 species in Norway is slightly
better than my average for the last 15 years.
I didn’t engage in much twitching but finding my own
Long-billed Dowitcher and Sandwich Tern were new species for me in Norway and
twitches (I would prefer to call them detours) resulted in two new gulls –
Ring-billed and Yellow-legged. Other good finds were a Turtle Dove and a Red
Kite.
I was less confined to Oslo this year and 180 species versus
last years record 205 illustrates that perfectly. Akershus was visited more
though and 211 species was my first tally over 200 since 2019 and my third best
tally ever following 216 in 2018 and 212 in 2017.
I had trips to Hedmark and Oppland and saw the usual forest
and mountain species and we stayed at the cabin in Bodø for the first time in a
while and while that disappointed on the bird front it did deliver on the
butterfly front big time.
An autumn without a visit to Værøy, Røst or Jæren was slightly
salvaged with only my second ever visit to Lista.
January
2025 started with a few Pine Grosbeaks hanging on from the
invasion the previous autumn but my last sighting was on Jan 17 - it is rather
amazing how they just seem to vanish. The Hawk Owl in Maridalen hung on until the
end of March though and could always brighten up a dull day.
Very good (unprecedented) numbers of sea ducks on the fjord
were exploiting an abundant hatch of baby mussels and a few Scaup amongst them were
nice.
Pine Grosbeak (konglebit) at Grefsenkollen
Hawk Owl (haukugle) in Maridalen
Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) at Fornebu
Scaup (bergand) on the fjord with a single Tufted Duck (toppand)
February
The most obvious species in February was probably Common
Crossbill as this species which had arrived in Oslo’s forests in the previous
autumn was no starting to breed as the numerous cones were clearly at just the
right stage to be suitable for feeding young. Females were nest making whilst
the mates looked on and kept guard and flocks of mostly males visited the roads
to lick salt.
Listening to singing owls on cloudless, windless and very
cold nights is always a highlight of late winter/early spring but it is not every
year the owls even bother singing as they will only turn their thoughts to
breeding if there are enough rodents. 2025 thankfully was such a year and a
number of visits to Owl Road revealed singing Great Grey, Tawny and Tengmalm’s
Owls.
By the end of the month a number of spring migrants had already
returned and for the second year running White-fronted Geese chose to stop off at
Bygdøy giving exceptional views. The Taiga Beans were also back before the
month end registering their second earliest arrival.
a female Crossbill (grankorsnebb) collecting nesting material in Maridalen
and male Crossbills searching for salts on the edge of a road
my first of a number of encounters with Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle), this one on Owl Road
and my first encounter of the year Great Grey Owl (lappugle) also on Owl Road
The Taiga Bean Goose pair V8 and 05 (with the GPS sender). The GPS plots of 05 indicated they bred in Sweden before transmissons abruptly ceased and come the autumn V8 (the male) had three young in tow but 05 was no more
Snow Bunting (snøspurv) in Maridalen - always one of the first and most anticipated spring migrants
a pair of White-fronted Geese (tundragås) with a Greylag at Bygdøy.
March
Woodcock and Lapwing arrived very early to Maridalen and
owling trips early in the month added singing Long-eared to the list.
A Stonechat was now an expected early spring find of a
species in growth but many sighting of possibly up to three different Bewick’s Swans
was a welcome sight of a species in decline in Western Europe and now seen so
infrequently in Norway it could be considered a national rarity.
Visits to Owl Road were rewarded with varying levels of
success suggesting perhaps a light crash in rodent numbers but we did still hear the odd Tengmalm’s and had another encounter with a
singing GG.
This year’s big movement of Pink-footed Geese occurred on
the 20th and I counted over 9000 birds in around 3 hours over Maridalen. Only a
couple of decades ago the big day would have been a month later. Crossbill
chicks had left the nest by the months end and quite quickly the species was
moving off looking for the next area with fresh cones.
The Maridalen Hawk Owl gave some of its best views right
before it left when it still seemed to find a good supply of voles and even
raised the hope that we could have local breeding (not that we ever saw more
than the one bird and there was no singing).
another Tengmalm's encounter
Hawkie and lunch
a GG
Bewick's Swan (dvergsvane) with Whoopers (sangsvane)
and here videos of 4 species of owl singing during the month plus a fifth havng a snack
April
Owls continued to be a theme with a Tengmalm’s nest finally
found and a pair visiting it at night but subsequent daytime visits never
revealed the nest to be occupied although there is mounting evidence that this
has more to do with my poor tree scratching skills than lack of birds. Northern
Lights also spiced up owling nights.
A trip to Per Christian’s cabin at the start of the month revealed
yet another Tengmalm’s plus a Hawk Owl but no Eagle Owls which we had really
hoped to discover. A stop at the marvellous floods at Starene revealed a ton of
geese and a White-tailed Eagle hunting them.
The first rarity of the year was a Ring-necked Duck at
Nordre Øyeren which had to be twitched as it was an Akershus tick although I
have already had one in Oslo.
An Easter visit to Hedmark resulted in finding a Great Grey
Owl nest in an old raptors nest which would then become the focus of a number
of guiding visits over the next couple of months.
A booming Bittern at Hellesjøvannet had to be heard and for
the first time I also saw (glimpsed) the species in Norway. That means that I
have now finally seen every species on my modest Norwegian list.
The Long-eared Owls that I had heard singing in March
revealed themselves in April and I found two surprisingly low down and visible
nests that provided many an interesting encounter in April and May.
A daughter keen to practice her driving and also to go shopping
in Sweden (cross border shopping both entails saving lots of money, finding
products you can’t buy in Norway and of course buying things that you really
could do fine without) gave a very memorable meeting with Red Kites on the
Norwegian side of the border where the species seems to be firmly established
now and we saw 4 birds.
A Green-winged Teal also had to twitched at Merkja and this
presumably returning bird became a long stayer.
Right at the end of the month another twitch gave
ridiculously good views of a 1st summer female Red-footed Falcon that had found
the supply of worms on a golf course too good to say no to.
Tengmalm's in an old woodpecker hole
northern lights the same night
a sub ad White-tailed Eagle (havørn) with a Pink-footed Goose (kortnebbgås) that it then dropped (and the goose flew off) at Starene
Ring-necked Duck (ringand) with a Tufted
incubating Great Grey Owl (lappugle)
roadside female Capercaille (storfugl) on the same trip
Red Kite (rødglente)
Red-footed Falcon (aftenfalk)
May
May is always the most exciting month of the year around
Oslo. May 2025 didn’t feel that great and Svellet was a shadow of its
once might self but one good day at Årnestangen and another at Fornebu gave me
two new, and self-found, Norwegian ticks so the statistics show it was a good
month!
The absolute highlight was initially a frustrating
experience when on the 9th I found a brick red wader sleeping with a
small group of Ruff distantly at Årnestangen. It took me an hour to be confident
that it was a Dowitcher and then even more time before it called allowing me to
call it as a Long-billed (the default of the two species in Norway). Being a
new species for Oslo and Akershus it was of course a popular bird with a number
of people making the 3km walk before it then flew off but was later refound at
Svellet which also allowed Svellet to regain some pride after having disappointed
until then.
Frequent trips to Hedmark to see the GG Owls also revealed a
singing (and probably another individual) Ortolan. This species has been in a
long term decline towards what seems an unavoidable disappearance as a breeding
bird in Norway but it still seems mighty odd that the Government announced in December that the species is “extinct” in Norway. With the
successful breeding that I discovered in 2023 (and which had been missed by those
paid to monitor the species), 2 singing males in 2024 and 2 singing males in
2025 (plus others and not just me suspecting that one of the males had a
companion) then it strikes me as being totally wrong to use the word «extinct» and actually shows a complete ignorance of the correct terminology among those
who make decisions (but no nature interested person in Norway would be surprised
by that). I am not trying to make light of the plight of Ortolan (and pretty
much every other migrant species) but a species that still returns to sing and
hold territory and which only two years ago was proved to breed cannot be
described as extinct.
If Svellet was struggling to attract waders then surely none
could be expected at Maridalsvannet but in the second half of the month the
water levels fell enough that it became a magnet for the late returning Temminck’s Stints with a huge count of 19 birds
and with small number of other species I actually saw more individual waders at
Maridalsvannet than at either Svellet or Årnestangen!
24th May was a monster day at Fornebu with fjord
gazing giving me Sandwich Tern (tick), loads of Red-throated Divers, Kittiwakes
and hundreds of Pale-bellied Brent Geese.
I had a visit to the mountains at the end of the month with
displaying Red-necked Phalaropes and Broad-billed Sandpipers as my reward but
not a singe raptor or owl spoke for the rodent situation.
Oslo & Akershus's first ever Long-billed Dowitcher (langnebbbekkasinsnipe)
One of remnants of Norway's breeding population of Ortolan Buntings
my first ever Norwegian Sandwich Tern (splitterne) was the highlight of a good day on the fjord at Fornebu
Great Grey Owl feeding time
female Red-necked Phalarope (svømmesnipe) in the mountains right at the end of the month
a pair of Garganey (knekkand) that turned up at Østensjøvannet looked like they would nest but vanished as abruptly as they appeared
one of the adults from the two pairs of Long-eared Owls (hornugle) I had been following since April
and one of the broods
June
The beginning of the month saw quite an arrival of Terns at
Maridalsvannet with both Common and Arctic exploiting an abundant hatch of aquatic
flying insects. Upto 8 Arctic and 4 Common is a new high but the last few years
have seen more and more June records of Terns here. And Svellet kind of redeemed
itself with a pair of Little Terns.
June is not complete without a visit to Beitostølen and
Valdresflya. Worryingly my Great Snipe lek was quiet for the second year
running but other species such as Dotterel were on fine fettle.
Breeding Hobbies and Honey Buzzards received attention that
would only increase as the summer wore on.
The start of the summer holidays at Hulvik resulted in my
second Sandwich Tern of the year (and ever in Norway) plus a self-found Caspian
both seen from the patio whilst drinking coffee and nighttime outings revealed
good numbers of Nightjars which is species definitely on the increase in Norway.
On the owl front I had a couple more visits to the Great
Greys and could see the young out of the nest and in Maridalen a Tawny Owl family
was great value.
a distinctive 3cy Arctic Tern (rødnebbterne) that hung around at Maridalsvannet for a few days
singing Lapland Bunting (lappspurv) in the mountains
female Dotterel (boltit)
young Tawny Owls (kattugle) in Maridalen
and one of the young GGO at my nest site
seawatching in style although the view is rather restricted
but Caspian Tern (rovterne) was not just seen but documented!
In England going to the gee gees means going to the horse
races. In the birding world we also have gee gees or GGs aka birds beginning with
Great Grey which in Norway means Owl and Shrike.
This winter has seen no movements of Great Grey and Hawk Owls
into southern Norway with birds seemingly staying in their breeding areas where
there are clearly plenty of rodents there and therefore no need to go on a
wander to find better feeding areas. From what I understand the rodent situation
is so good in GG breeding areas that they are primarily hunting within the
forest and at night so even there are not particularly easy to see even if
there are (relatively) lots of them.
That one should turn up away from breeding areas and in a
relatively small area of woodland is therefore surprising but a drip of
pictures on Facebook that then turned into a bubbling brook before morphing
into a raging torrent showed that there was a bird in Østfold near Fredrikstad.
There was clearly an attempt at secrecy for the birds sake but as my own
experiences in Maridalen a few years ago taught me secrecy is not possible as
soon as a couple of other people know and especially if the pull of Social Media
is too strong to resist (which it wasn’t for me that time).
I had made an attempt to see the bird on Monday when a
shopping trip to Sweden with Jr only involved a 10 minute detour to see the
bird. A few likely looking older men in camouflage clothing and attempting to
hide cameras showed I was in the right spot but an attempt to find out if they
had seen the bird was met with answers suggesting they didn’t know what I was
talking about until one of them recognised me and realised it would be a bit
silly to try to deny the obvious. The bird had been seen earlier but had
disappeared and I therefore decided to continue on the shopping trip and try
again at dusk on the way home. This did not reveal the bird in rather wet
conditions but a check of the weather forecast showed that Wednesday would be a
bright, sunny and windless day in another wise dull week so a plan was hatched.
I have made a long given promise that I would show a
Maridalen regular a Great Grey Owl if I ever saw one so I asked him if he
wanted to join me and unsurprisingly he did not need asking twice. We left Oslo
at 0800 with sunrise at 0915 and arrived just after that mysterious and seldom
seen golden orb had risen over the horizon. We met another Maridalen regular
and after promising to call each other when/if we found the bird went searching
for it. After two hours all we had found was a Great Grey Shrike which is a
very good bird but not quite as Great as its namesake that we were hoping to
see. We kept on searching though and on returning to the road met a togger who
told us that even though he hadn’t seen it that it had apparently been seen by
others flying in “that direction” (he pointed). So we continued walking in that
direction and after adding a few more thousand steps to our tally we saw some
green clad men (and a woman) pointing big lenses at something and there it was.
The Maridalen regular was there too but hadn’t been kind enough to send us the
message he had unprompted earlier promised to send. Apparantly he “hadn’t been
allowed”…. I do not know who was policing the viewing but the steady stream of
other toggers that were turning up showed that there were clearly different
rules for different people.
We were able to view the bird well but it was quite distant and
no one tried to get any closer - it was quite refreshing to see such self control.
The bird was cleary just enjoying the sun and preening every now and again before
it dived down at something and was then mostly hidden from us but was clearly
in hunt mode.
So a double Gee Gee day - what a great way to finish the
birding year!
