Day of Days

Last night the word famous MOGA movement had one of its world famous meetings and there has never been such a crowd ever before in the history of the universe. It has been said by many that this movement is the greatest movement in the birding world and there has never been seen anything like it EVER and of course as its leader I am the most respected and handsome birder in the history of not just birding but the universe.

If we are to be honest (but one should of course never be so) then Making Owling Great Again didn’t have the most successful outing last night with Tengmalm’s again being absent but Pygmy and Tawny did reveal themselves to Jack and I 😉

even if MOGA meetings don't deliver what it says on the tin you cannot deny it is GREAT to be out in the forest at night

 

Today though has been an epic day!

When walking the Beast this morning Redwings were moving and it felt birdy so I decided that Fornebu needed to be grilled to find some wing bars. It was indeed birdy and Chiffchaffs were huetting all over the place but I struggled to find anything unusual until an F35 streaked through the skies high above me and a few seconds after it had passed then I heard it as did some Bearded Tits (should I start calling them Reedlings?) which called from the reedbed by me. This was if anything rarer than a YbW. My last sighting of a Beardie was a year and a half ago whilst of Ybw only a year ago. There turned out to be 4 birds but only one, a female, showed relatively well and she was ringed. It would be interesting to know from whence the lady has cometh.

a ringed female Bearded Tit (skjeggmeis)

They were surprisingly quiet and skulky which suggests they may well have been around a few days as freshly arrived birds are usually very restless and noisy. So, a year tick and a species I have been hoping would turn up and spend the winter at Fornebu. Whether they stay needs to be seen but it will be fun finding out.

The day though had only just begun. After a good walk around Storøya and taking in Koksa as well as Storøykilen I decided to stop at the last remaining area of Nansenparken which seems to have any attraction to passerines – namely the urban vegetable patch. I was thinking of a rare Stonechat or Wheatear but instead a Turtle Dove flew up!!! Only my third ever in Norway and my first self-found one this was a proper rarity and I put the news out pronto. It was a very smart bird and seem settled until for no obvious reason it took off and disappeared but 6 others managed to see it.

My Norwegian list is a very modest 326 species but my self found list is now 287 which is decidedly respectable.

the Turtle Dove (turteldue) when I found it

it soon moved up onto a lamppost allowing this photo to prove where it was

although the plumage looks very adult like the lesser coverts are pale and I think juvenile so I reckon it is a very advanced 1cy

here we can see that the inner primaries are new adult ones and the outer primaries are old juvenile ones

the obligatory selfie

But the day was still not over. A Caspian Gull that was very belatedly reported from Middelalderparken in central Oslo a couple of weeks ago and a message came through that it had been refound at exactly the same time the dove flew off so 15 minutes later I was looking for it. The pictures I had first seen of the bird leave me feeling it is perhaps more cactus than cach but my viewpoint may be conflicted as my only self-found cach was eventually not approved as the records committee saw it as more of a cactus (if this is making no sense to you then cactus comes from the latin name of Caspian which is cachinnans and Herring Gull which is argentatus meaning the bird is a hybrid between these two species). I am also the first to admit that I suck when it comes to gulls and today's pictures do look more convincing. It was a small bird so presumably a female no matter who its mum and dad are.

The gull, if pure, was of course also a year tick so three potential year ticks on the same day in October when not on an island is bloody good going!

Here are my poor pictures and I must also admit that when I took them I did not think it was the bird but can see now that it is......

a gull with a lot of and perhaps 100% Caspian in it

the gulls were being fed by a concerned citizen and as soon as they saw her arriving they flew up to her so she is clearly a regular fixture. Here a tight mass of gulls were tucking into the food that she emptied out.

Gressholmen

The car has been in the garage for a couple of days and I used the chance to bird Oslo by public transport including on the boat out to Gressholmen. Despite damp, grey weather there was lots of life on Gressholmen with displaying Shelduck, Red-breasted Mergansers, Oystercatchers and Black-headed Gulls making lots of noise. 11 Ringed Plover was a very high count and may well be the entire local breeding population. The coastal breeding birds return early where as the birds that breed in the mountains or tundra do not pass through mid May. Chaffinches were also back and singing and it was pure heaven to hear them 😊. I was hoping for some more unusual migrants such as Rock Pipit or Snow Bunting but it was very quiet on the passerine front except for my first Grey Wagtail of the year.

With the car back I paid a visit to Fornebu today and could add Snow Bunting to my year list and in Maridalen I finally added Black Woodpecker plus had my first Mistle Thrush and Buzzard there.

The Oslo area is still very much in the grips of winter whereas places to the south but also inland to the north east have far less snow cover. We are forecast to have temperatures below zero again next week so there will not be any big arrivals of migrants for a bit.

here the male Shelduck (gravand) seem to be making the moves

but here it is a female chasing off another female

this video has displaying Shelduck and Red-breasted Mergansers (siland)

And this video has a sound I had not heard for over half a year

3 of the 11 Ringed Plovers (sandlo)

the Little Grebe (dvergdykker) at Frognerkilen now in near full summer plumage. Look how small it is compared to the (not very large) Goldeneyes (kvinand)

this gull caught my eye and had a definite Caspi vibe to it. It was ringed in Oslo on 26 July 2020 as a 2cy Herring Gull but the ringer also wondered whether it was a hybrid. Since being ringed it has been reported from exactly the same place year round

my first Maridalen Buzzard (musvåk) of 2023

This one ain’t for you Terje!

This post will only cover gulls so if that ain’t your thing then look away now!

The car stayed safely locked today and I was sat in front of the PC translating a soon to hit the stores where to watch guide in the morning. Come lunchtime I decided I would take the bus down to the Opera to check on the gull situation. I was really hoping to see Iceland and Glaucous Gull together and was therefore very pleased to see the Iceland Gull with my first sweep over the resting gulls in Bispevika. I also spied Stig Kalvatn who had arrived just before me (clearly if Stig and I choose independently to go to the same location, at the same time in search of gulls then this increases the chances to finding something!). Stig was able to inform me that the Iceland was the “only” interesting gull.

I decided to buy some bread to see if I could encourage any more gulls to appear but just as I was about to throw it out something spooked the gulls. They all flew up and I threw out bread to encourage them to stay but the half that returned did not contain the Iceland. I stayed around for an hour without the Iceland or Glauc turning up but did have a pale Herring/hybrid thingy migiggy and also wondered over the array of plumages of the Herring Gulls present (whenever this happens I know it is time to go and lie down!).

Spot the Iceland Gull (grønlandsmåke)

It seems to have injred itself behind the bill

One of those pale 1st winter Herring Gulls (gråmåke) or possibly there are some Glaucous Gull genes present. The bird looked much more interesting when viewed from behind

This Herring Gul was interesting for the dark eye and the limited black in the primaries and also a small headed, long billed look. It still has a dark feather in the tail so is clearly not fully adult which might explain the dark eye. I guess this bird has to be a fourth winter / 5cy but the it is a strange bird with no signs of immaturity on the wing and the bill looks adult like suggesting it may be even older. However a 4th winter should have an all white tail so nothing really matches!  The limied black in the wing tips points at a northern origin

And what about this one? It had a very special jizz, sitting high in the water like a Black-headed Gull. I entertained thoughts of a 2nd winter Yellow-legged Gull but have no flight shots. Assuming that it is the more likely Herring Gull then is it an advanced 2dnd winter or a retarded 3rd winter?

These two should be fairly easily aged as 3rd winter and 2nd winter

look at the difference in head streaking on these adult (or near adult Herring Gulls). Thr bird middle left is the one with little black in the wing and the bird to its right must be a 4th winter with so much black on the bill

the variation in two adult Herring Gulls (although the upper bird could conveivably be a younger adult). The streaked bird is presumably a northern bird with a slightly darker mantle. The bird with the white head (which the majority of adults here now have) is presumably a local breeder but both are of the race argentatus I would assume that the British/continental argenteus also turns up but don't know whether anyone has put any effort into trying to identifying them.

The top two birds here are presuably both 3rd winter Herring Gulls but note that the upper bird has a younger looking bill and darker eye but more white in the primaries when compared to the middle bird.

fgfgghggggfffggfgfgg

I also had this bird with a distinctly Caspian like jiz and dark eye but never saw the wings..

Was it a Caspian afterall?

Well this is a tad embarrassing and unsatisfactory and also a good example of why I usually let others do the gull finding. Wasn’t it nice when we just had Herring Gulls? I’ve just had a nostalgic look at Peter Grants Gull book - the authorative text in the 1980’s - and cachinnans was just a subspecies which warranted 9 lines of text whereas now it warrants pages and pages and huge ID articles).

The gull which I featured in yesterdays post after the Glaucous Gulls was clearly strange enough to get my attention and document it and although it was Caspian Gull that was going through my mind the bird didn't match my own mental picture of what a 1^st winter Caspian should look like – an image formed by pictures of “classic” birds on the web plus this well watched 1^st winter from 2 winters ago (Caspian Gulls are still rare bird in Norway with few oppurtunities to study them around Oslo). When I got home I therefore was more interested in deciding whether the second Glaucous was a hybrid or not and didn’t spend too much time on the Caspo like creature. When I eventually did look at it my interest was again aroused although I was thinking more along the lines of a hybrid and I sent some pictures to Sindre M who agreed that it could be (probably was) a hybrid and I may have left it that but felt it was interesting enough to put it out on the Facebook group Western Palearctic Gulls asking whether there were others who thought it contained Capsian genes. The answers didn’t take long to arrive (despite the late hour) and there were immediate comments that it was a pure Caspian. This was a surprise as I had half expected comments along the lines of strange Herring Gull but the general consensus (with the excpetion of half of the Norwegian and Finnish commentators who prefer hybrid) was that it was a Caspian and Lou Bertalan even went to the trouble of scoring it on the Gibbons et al scoring system from a British Birds Article and placed it right on the Caspian side of the Caspian/hybrid threshold. Now I will be honest and not claim to fully understand how he has scored the bird (requires more experience of this field than I can claim to have) but based on this feedback then it would seem that the bird may be good! In an out of range context it might not be the classic looking bird we would want to find in Norway but equally it isn’t a Herring either and all these LWHG have enormous variation in plumage and structure such that where the lines are drawn are sometimes quite arbitrary and DNA apparently doesn’t always help either…..

I have posted the pictures on the Norwegian reporting system asking for comments but do not expect to receive any. The Norwegian birding community which is always shy/apathetic/worried about reputation (delete based on personal opinion) is currently going through a cyclical low in engagement  and I think at the moment you could post a picture of a Peacock labelled as a Blue Tit and nobody (OK there are a couple of people who care) would be arsed to comment.

So we will see where this gull ends up. At the end of the day it will be my fellow NSKF members who will be responsible for making judgement on the bird (unless the species gets removed as a national rarity before then.…)

Here are my pictures of the bird (yesterday’s plus a couple more) plus the scoring done by Lou Bertalan on FB based on the first 2 pictures.

And Lou Bertalan's scoring (from Facebook):

----------------

Extent of scapular moult
1 a small number (less than 1/3) of first-generation feathers remaining

Greater-covert pattern
1 white edges with delicate notches or vermiculation; or dark brown centre with white tip to 1/3 of length (i.e. white restricted to tip or distal third)

Bill shape
1 Slim, slight gonydeal angle (ratio 2.87, so actually >2,8 but there is a slight gonys angle visible)

Leg length
1 Moderately long

Ventral bulge
0,5 - there is a very slight bulge visible but note especially the flat belly in front of it!

Primary projection
1 moderately long (ratio 0.5

Moult: greater coverts
5 no moult

Moult: median coverts
4 one or two feathers moulted

Moult: tertials
3 all old

Darkness of head and body
1 reduced grey wash or streaking (confined to flanks and/or single streaks around nape)

First-generation tertial pattern
1 fine pale fringe around distal portion (like classic michahellis), possibly also with some vermiculations

Second-generation scapular pattern
2 strong, contrasting shaft-streaks, anchors and/or dark central diamonds, but these more patterned feathers are less than 1/2 of all; ground colour creamy or silvery-grey, possibly with some grey feathers mixed in.

so this makes a score of 21,5 which is still within cachinnans, close to the border to hybrids. but it also illustrates some weakness of this scoring system. covert moult weighs too much, imo (5 points for no replaced GC!), there is no criteria for rectrices pattern which personally i give a lot of weight, and it simplifies matters of 2nd gen. scpaular pattern: there are certain types of scapular patterns and each one should be scritinized separately.

what i'd still discuss in this bird is: head jizz (mentioned as not good for caspian gulls) - yes, could sit on a weak female YLG too, especially with the slight eye smudge, but caspians can show even more dark striation around eye than this. scapular pattern is of the shaggy type with one central transversal mark and only a weak thin (or absent) subterminal band. this is a common type in caspian, can appear in other taxons too but usually more bold (double anchor in YLG, bold subterminal bar giving a scaly look in HG), which i think is often underestimated because one likes to have the nice diamond shapes or just shaft streaks as typical cachinnans pattern - but this distorts reality since at least half of all 1st winter caspians don't show this kind of expected pattern but the one more similar with the other taxons. tail in this bird is very good for cachinnans, inner wings shows the nice venetian blind with p2-4 showing pale lozenges etc...

-----------------

With regards the score of 21.5 (which is a bit cheeky as I don't think the system was meant to allow half points) the range for Caspian is 12-25 and the range for hybrid 22-32 so as you see right on the (edge of) the border.

Today I went birding at Fornebu. I didn’t find any pipits (had been talk of something possibly rare there yesterday) but the reedbed at Koksa was positively hopping with birds. A flock of Long-tailed Tits were feeding in the reeds along with good numbers of Blue Tits, Great Tits, Wrens, a Robin and surprisingly 5 Goldcrests. Best of all though was hearing at least a couple of Bearded Tits which wouldn’t show themselves but at least dispels my previous conclusion that they had moved on/perished.

A Long-tail where there should have been a Beard

A foggy tip

I really am not posting so much at the moment. My latest absence was due to being housebound after a skiing accident on Sunday whereby a large man on a snowboard used my back to stop himself. The pain the next two days was excruciating and I was sure that I had a broken rib but I awoke on day 3 to find that things were much better and I was able to move around freely although bending down is still a pain.

Oslo is currently experiencing no wind and weather that results in a “lid” over the city and concerns for air pollution such that yesterday saw a ban (for the first time) of diesel cars in the city. It was warned that the ban would last a few days but in the end the pollution wasn’t so bad and there was no ban today (I have petrol so wouldn’t have been affected anyway). Today though saw thick fog. When I left the house I hoped that it was an Oslo phenomenon but it soon became clear that it was an everywhere phenomenon. I had decided to go the Rubbish Tip at Askim which I had visited on Friday in the hope of a white-winger. As I drove and the fog didn’t lift I became worried that 1.) there would be no gulls there as they wouldn’t have been able to find their way there from their roost site (unknown site but potentially many 10s of kilometres away on the coast) or 2.) that if there were gulls there then I wouldn’t be able to see them!

When I arrived and after enduring a smirky smile from the guy on duty at the entrance (what type of person wants to come in here to watch gulls!) I could see there were some gulls but only 20 or so on a roof top.  I parked up and scanned through them and the second gull I saw was a 1^st winter Glaucous and so was the fourth gull I saw!! Good start.

The fog was a bit of a problem but after a bit they flew down into the rubbish and I was able to drive close to them. The two Glaucous Gulls were very different with one being a bruty, classic plumaged bird but the other was a much darker bird especially on the breast and primaries and had generally far more patterning on its feathers. It was different enough to have me considering a hybrid with Herring Gull or at least the presence of Herring Gull genes but I believe that it was just a very well marked (pure) Glaucous but cannot be entirely sure.

After a while a lot more gulls turned up but there were fewer than on Friday with maybe 300 Herring and only 3 Great Black-backs. Despite having a good overview of the tip I realised that a lot of gulls were going down to rest on a field beyond the fence. I was able to view the field but the fog meant I couldn’t see the gulls properly.  There were a lot of corvids here though at closer range and amongst them two locally scarce Rooks.

Although the Glaucs were very easy to find for 30 minutes or so after I arrived they suddenly vanished (despite there being lots of other gulls on the tip) and I only saw one of them distantly after this despite being there for 2 and a half hours. Whether they had moved off or were just resting unseen on the field I don’t know but it confirmed that one needs to put a lot of time in to find good birds. The Iceland Gull hasn’t been reported again since I just missed it on Friday but it wouldn’t surprise me if it could still be around. I had a single gull that I had me thinking Caspian and which may well be a hybrid (or is it pure? Comments on Facebook would suggest pure) and also a tiny dark Herring Gull see pictures below).

A small flock of Redpolls was flying around the place and when they once landed close to me I was delighted to see at least one Arctic Redpoll amongst them. My pictures were a bit distant though. I tried sitting in the car and playing Redpoll calls which did bring three birds very close (they sat on the roof at one stage) but they were just Common/Mealy Redpolls.

Time flew though but 2 and a half hours is long enough and with the fog showing no signs of lifting I headed home.

I had a stop to look for Kingfisher (not been reported for a long time) in Bunnefjorden and when I arrived there was very little open water and it was calm which I thought gave me a good chance of finding one if it was still here. And sure enough it was! J

The classic brute of a Glaucous Gull (polarmåke)

same bird

The second Glaucous Gull which has me wondering as to whether there are som Herring Gull genes in it 

same bird

both the Glaucous Gulls together. Note the different head shape of the less obvious bird - here both head and body shape are quite Herring like

This Gull with its dark tertial and coverts plus pale head definitely has a lot of the Caspian about it without quite ticking all the boxes (or does it?)

same bird

and then there was this tiny, dark Herring Gull. I saw it in flight and it had a paler window on the inner hand which dispelled any ideas I had that it was a LBB Gull

another dark eyed Herring Gull

Arctic Redpoll (polarsisik)

possibly a different bird

Common/Mealy Redpoll (gråsisik)

I took this bird to be a Common/Mealy in the field although did note a large pale rump in flight. Note how it does have a single dark feather on the undertail coverts plus some darker streaks but that these can disappear depending on how the feathers are arranged

another Common/Mealy Redpoll

This bird shows features of both Common/Mealy and Arctic 

This bird must be a Common/Mealt with such dark plumage and large bill but look at that large white rump 

Rook (kornkråke) with Hooded Crows (kråke)

Kingfisher (isfugl) 

It seems to have a slightly paler base to the bill but I believe the lower mandible is black over nearly the entire length so this is a male