Guess who’s back? - and not a butterfly in sight! 😊
Autumn is really upon us and the cereal fields in Maridalen
are being harvested as we speak. This always causes the first flocks of Meadow
Pipits to appear and there is also a big flock of Greylag Geese so it is nice
and birdy. A fine 1st year male Bluethroat was today’s bird of the
day but not quite as good as a Kingfisher on Wednesday and there are also good
numbers of Whinchats, Nutcrackers flying back and forth from the city where
they are collecting Hazel nuts and raptors to see including Honey Buzzards and
Hobbies.
Yesterday I needed to go to the airport to pick someone up
so made a day of it with a stop at Svellet and then a look for the Taiga Bean
Geese which have already been seen. I failed to find the geese and with no GPS
tags still functioning it has become a bit more hit and miss especially in the autumn
when they do not use the river. I did find feathers and droppings at a favoured
loafing site so can personally confirm their return
Svellet gave me my first Little Stint and Curlew Sandpiper
of the year but I am till missing three common waders for my year list – Grey Plover,
Sanderling and Great Snipe – and fear there is a real risk they remain as
absentees.
Maridalen has had a good autumn for waders and that is despite there being nearly no mud showing due to high water levels. Today 2 Ruff were on an island and over the last couple of weeks I have had flyover Curlew, Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Redshank and Greenshank aswell as Common Sandpipers along the rocky shore. The Lapwings look to have moved on sometime in July though and I saw no evidence that the two late broods produced any fledged young.
If my photos are looking even worse than usual then it is because
the bazooka has now gone into complete lock down and I cannot get any life out
of it so all pictures are with the superzoom which itself is suffering with
age.
Bluethroat (blåstrupe) in Maridalen. The colourful throat shows it to be a male
and the wing bar shows it to be a bird of the year
Whinchat (buskskvett) and Meadow Pipit (heipiplerke) very typical birds for the end of August
although this Whitethroat (tornsanger) is getting a bit late
spot the Kingfisher (isfugl)?
a bit easier here
some of the Greylag Geese (grågås) and a Whooper Swan (sangsvane)
12 Curlew (storspove) migrating over Maridalsvannet earlier in the month
and two Greenshank (gluttsnipe) that flew around looking for somewhere to land
A video of a Mink eating a Crayfish and you can see the remains of many others. Otters have recently been seen in Maridalen and if they establish themselves then they will hopefully result in a reduction in Mink numbers
Despite my best intentions I have spent quite some time
this week with Honey Buzzards with a few checks on the regular nest but
also trying to triangulate on a nest that I believe must exist in Maridalen. I
am now within a just a few hundred metres of it and with luck will locate it
tomorrow…
Other than that there is an increase in migrants in
Maridalen with a few pipits, wagtails, Whinchats and Wheatears on the stubble fields
and the organic vegetable patch still hosting Red-backed Shrikes and best of
all a couple of Bluethroats.
The Maridalen swan saga continues. After the Mute
Swan pair was driven off leaving behind a small cygnet (which I have not seen
for a couple of weeks and presume has perished) something serious has now happened with the Whooper Swan
family. On the 18th the pair were at Kirkeby and in Nesbukta there
was a single, lost looking cygnet. I then had no sightings of any swans until
today when the pair were again at Kirkeby but with no sign of the cygnet. Prior
to the 18th they had seemed like a very tight family unit with the
adults leading the two cygnets around and never leaving their side so what happened
on the 18th? Why would the pair abandon one of the young and what
happened to the other? Were they attacked by a fox or dog? Or have the pair
themselves turned on their own young? They are a very aggressive pair with
their frequent attacks on the Mutes and any other Whoopers that dare visit
Maridalen in the breeding season. Have they finally lost it and once their own
young reached a certain size seen them as a threat? They are getting on now and
have bred since 2010 but after rearing at least 40 young between 2010 to 2021 things
have changed and since then they have struggled with 3 fledged young in 2023
their only success in this period.
Water levels at Årnestangen and Svellet have been
very high but started falling again from the weekend and a visit to Svellet
today revealed lots of birds on newly (re)exposed mudbanks with 160 Ruff a very
good count and out of 10 species in total a Black-tailed Godwit was the
highlight.
Bluethroat (blåstrupe) in Maridalen
Red-backed Shrikes (tornskate) are still finding lots to eat in the organic vegetable patch
the Whooper Swan (sangsvane) pair and a single cygnet alone 1.5km away on 18 August. I have seen the adults again today, although not yesterday but have not seen the cygnet
the family on the 15th
one of three Three-toed Woodpeckers (tretåspett) that entertained my whilst I was on Honey Buzzard watch
My final two days in Tromsø saw a continued reduction in the number and variety of waders at Langnes which I have now visited three mornings on the trot when Jr had lectures/meetings. It was already starting to feel like a local patch away from home and I will be following sightings in Tromsø more closely from now on and am already looking forward to my next visit.
It was surprising the number of species that still had unfledged young which may be a result of a very late spring here. Redshank, Arctic Tern, Common Gull, Eider, Meadow Pipit and Reed Bunting all still had young either in the nest or not fully grown.
Adult Arctic Tern (rødnebbterne). It had a couple times dive bombed me pulling up only centimetres from my head but I failed to film this
The reason the adult was angry was the presence of this juvenile that could barely fly
Meadow Pipit (heipiplerke) which had young nearby and a juv Willow Warbler (løvsanger) which seemed attracted by its alarm calls
This young Common Gull (fiskemåke) may not make it
The holiday is coming to an end. We are now driving the 1200km (or more if we take the scenic route) back to Oslo.
The last week has seen me have additional visits to both Graddis and Sulis.
Sulis has resulted in the same species as before and even more Northern Clouded Yellows with them being the commonest butterfly but my hopes of getting better photos of both them and the Pale Arctic Clouded Yellows were dashed by the fact that they hardly ever landed and if they did land close to me it was all too short and my camera handling skills were lacking (the autofocus is broken so I am doing everything manually..).
I visited Graddis 9 days after my very successful visit and it was almost like I was visiting another locality. Two weeks of blazing sun and long, hot days had clearly been too much for the northern species and I saw none of the 4 goodies I had seen previously. I may have seen an Arctic Ringlet (disaringvinge) but it never stopped flying and my one photo is very unconclusive. Idas Blues were now very common though and this had been absent just 9 days before. One big surprise was finding a Large Heath (myrgulvinge) which is the first ever record for Nordland county. Most of northern Norway has ever been visited by anyone with any interest in butterflies so there are surely lots of surprises out there waiting to be found but Graddis has been visited often enough and Large Heath is an obvious species so I feel sure this was a vagrant wanderer.
I also added a new species of dragonfly to my list with Alpine Emerald (fjellmetallibelle) proving to be fairly easy to find at both Sulis and especially Graddis where surprisingly it has not been recorded before which does perhaps show that even here there is definitely more to be found.
Bird wise there has been little of interest with just a few waders including my first juvenile Ruff and Spotted Redshank of the «autumn» and my first ever Treeceeper at the cabin.
A female Alpine Emerald (fjellmetallibelle) that was laying eggs
Male Purple-edged Copper (purpurgullvinge)
Moorland Clouded Yellow (myrgulvinge) on a Fragrant Orchid (brudespor)
Dewy Ringlet (Fjellringvinge)
The first Large Heath (myrringvinge) recorded in Nordland county
Also my best ever photo of the species I think
Was this an Arctic Ringlet (disaringvinge) or just an Arran Brown (fløyelsringvinge)?
Another Alpine Emerald
Blåmannsisen Glacier from close to the cabin
A male Bluethroat (blåstrupe) with food for young that were already out of the nest
Site for Alpine Emerald and also Azure Hawker (fjellibelle)
Male Northern Clouded Yellows (mjeltgulvinge)
And here a female
Another missed photo
And here a missed photo of a Pale Arctic Clouded Yellow (polargulvinge)
And again…. But there will always be another year and hopefully another camera lens
We have had another long weekend and with good weather forecast
on Saturday I decided to head to the mountains on Friday evening. Normally I
would have had a boyz weekend in the mountains around this time but
circumstances have conspired to mean that wouldn’t happen this year so I rather
spur of the moment packed a sleeping bag in the car and headed off on my own.
In the end I was out for 27 hours and had 2 hours of sleep, 30 minutes of which
was a rather necessary power nap on the way home…
I surprised myself with how much energy I had although on
the way home I was counting down the kilometres.
After 3 and a half hours driving I started the birding at my
Great Snipe lek. After a blank last year I was hoping that was just a bit of
bad luck but there were no birds again this year and I now reckon the lek has
been abandoned. Why is more difficult to answer. It is close to a path and a
ski lift but has always been so and I cannot see any changes in the immediate
area that would affect the birds. The Beitostølen area has seen lots and lots
of building of cabins but the lek is above the cabins, perhaps though the nesting
females have always used areas that are now being developed and the general
area is no longer attractive for them. Alternatively the species itself is
suffering a significant decline due to factors in winter and passage areas and
this has causes some leks to disappear as the birds concentrate in core areas.
These are my maximum counts at the lek since I discovered it in 2012 and the
downward trend is obvious:
the (former) lek site
There were very few birds around the lek otherwise and the
vegetation was still very brown. There was little snow and only lakes above
1300m had ice but I think this is from a warm period 2-3 weeks ago but since
then it has been cold and windy so vegetation has not yet started developing.
I drove a long stretch of road during the night with
frequent stops hoping to find Great Snipe other places but did not succeed.
There was a lot of other life though. Between midnight and 1am I was surprised
by how much activity there was from other waders and grouse and also a Short-eared
Owl that perched in my headlights.
I had my hour and half sleep in the car and awoke at 3:30am to
lots of noise. All manner of birds were singing and displaying and over the
next 6 hours I feasted my eyes on Dotterels, Temminck’s Stints, Shore Larks,
Lapland and Snow Buntings, Bluethroats, Long-tailed Ducks, Scaup, Common and
Velvet Scoters and more. It is clearly not a rodent year in this area and
aswell as no Long-tailed Skuas I just had a single Rough-legged Buzzard,
another Short-eared Owl, 2 Kestrels, a Golden Eagle and a White-tailed Eagle.
After this as the sun warmed things up I concentrated on
butterfliesand I took a slight detour
to visit a site of the rare Large Grizzled Skipped (alvesmyger). I did at the
time think I had found them but my pictures show I saw, or at least the ones I
managed to photograph, were ordinary Grizzled Skippers which I didn’t realise occurred
there. Their large cousins do fly later and the end of June is the time most people
see them so I will have to try again later… I did have another good species but
none were new for me so I am a bit disappointed but will I hope have a
butterfly post soon.
Dotterel (boltit)
it was only displaying females that I saw but they were very active
Golden Eagle (kongeørn) and a mountain
I heard quite a few (although not lots of) Bluethroats (blåstrupe) but saw none at close range
I only had Lapland Buntings (lappspurv) at one site but 5! males were singing and song flighting within 100m of each other
a Ptarmigan (fjellrype) at 11pm
male Shore Lark (fjellerke)
and his mate
one of the two Short-eared Owls (jordugle) I saw
Snow Buntings (snøspurv) were unusually numerous this year
male
female
03:39 at my hotel
my now favoured raptor watch point was a bit disappointing this year with just 4 birds of 4 species: Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle, Rough-legged Buzzard and Kestrel
