The mountains - Valdres

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 butterflies  and 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

Valdres cabin weekend installment 2

This second installment covers waders.

The area close to the cabin at 940moh held Great and Common Snipe, Woodcock, Redshank, Greenshank, Golden Plover and Common Sandpiper.

Valdresflye at 1380moh and the nearby Jotenheimsvegen, 1030moh, hosted Dotterel, Temminck’s Stint, Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Redshank, Wood Sandpiper, Snipe and Golden Plover.

Dotterel are a must see bird when visiting Valdresflye and we had at least 3 females performing display flights over the areas. When there is still lots of snow then early in the morning Temminck’s Stints and Ringed Plovers will often be on the edge of the road looking for food.

female Dotterel (boltit)

we only had a couple of displaying Dunlin (myrsnipe) and they kept their distance

Redshank (rødstilk)

Ringed Plover (sandlo) on the road. There seemed to be far fewer than normal

displaying Temminck's Stint - perhaps the commonest wader at the top of Valdresflye

A bit of magic in Maridalen

With the high water levels and blue skies I have not been expecting any waders in Maridalen but once again my predictions have proven to be wrong. Today there was a distinct arrival of waders despite cloudless skies and I believe a combination of a full moon and perhaps favourable winds was enough to cause a lot of waders to make the move north and the ones that were over Maridalen at dawn just decided to land for a rest. I started the day checking the ploughed field where I was hoping for pipits and wagtails with perhaps a Shore Lark but there was nothing, not even a gull! The farmer had only ploughed half the field though and from the still stubble area I heard the unmistakeable sound of a displaying Great Snipe! I have had Great Snipe a few times on spring passage in Maridalen but never in the middle of stubble field. I had my thermal imager with me but on a sunny morning there were far too many warm objects for it to be of any help in finding the bird but I did eventually manage to locate it although it was far from cooperative. This would appear to be the first record in Norway this (late) spring.

I was well chuffed with how the day had started and then when I went down to the lake and found numbers of Greenshank (13) and Wood Sandpiper (17) I realised something was afoot and regretted my decision to not visit Svellet today. I scanned the lake for ducks hoping for scoter and saw there were some Tufties flying around. I walked out to Nestangen to get a better view of the lake and going through a small group of Tufties I saw a red head and grey back and immediately thought that Maridalen’s perhaps most obvious bogey bird, Pochard, had finally turned up. But no, it was not a Pochard but something even more unusual. I briefly considered Redhead before realising that it was in fact a hybrid between Pochard and Tufted. I do rather like hybrids so thought this was really cool and then spent ages trying to adequately digitally document it.

There were 39 Tufted Duck on the lake which is a very respectable total along with 21 Black-throated and 2 Red-throated Divers and a Great Crested Grebe but only 11 Teal indicated a clear out rather than arrival of dabbling ducks.

With the blues skies and at time southerly winds I spent a lot of time peering skywards but did not have a single raptor all day!!!

Here is my eBird checklist.

I don't know whether it is the photographer or the equipment that is to blame but y pictures from today do not do the birds, and my views of them, justice.

filming the hybrid and the Tufties

male hybrid Pochard (taffeland) x Tufted Duck (toppand)

the tuft from the Tufted is very obvious here

but here the head shape is very Pochard like

Wood Sandpiper (grønnstilk)

Ring Ouzel (ringtrost) listening for worms

Greenshanks (gluttsnipe)

Great Snipe (dobbeltbekkasin) - the diagnostic double wing bars are just visible

here it is difficult to be sure what type of snipe it is