All quiet on the Oslo front

A little bit of birding today in fantastic autumn light and landscapes gave few birds. Five flocks of Pink-footed Geese heading south had me thinking that a large passage was taking place but it fizzled out. At Fornebu there were a handful of Chiffchaffs, a single Swallow and 5 Lapwings as the only remaining summer visitors and in Maridalen the Whooper Swan family was still in residence by their nest site. The young must take their first flight soon and I still have concerns as to how they will cope as they will have to take off from a field and I am sure that it is normal that they normally practice on lakes where they can take long run ups and crash land relatively safely.

I stumbled upon this snipe and before I saw the bill had hoped it was going to be less than Common

these were the only wing bars I saw today - Siskin (grønnsisik)

the young Whooper Swans (sangsvane) in Maridalen are fully grown but have yet to take their first flight

And a little highlights video from Mallorca:

 

Back in the hood

The last week has been spent in Mallorca on a family holiday and not birding during primetime in Norway which means that it was not me but rather Håvard Eggen who discovered a second for Norway (and a very rare WP bird) in the form of a Baltimore Oriole on, yes you’ve guessed it Værøy! It goes to show that timing and weather mean everything with island birding in the autumn – the obvious solution would be to move there..

Back in Oslo today I took Oslo Birder Jr on a cycle ride to Maridalen where we twitched the valleys only second ever Shovelers and best of all had a Pygmy Owl. I heard a bunch of very irritated passerines and knew they were mobbing an owl. We walked up to them and stood under the tree where all the commotion was going on. I was thinking Tawny Owl and was therefore looking for something big and it too me a looong time to notice the tiny yellow eyed predator sitting just 5 metres above me on a small branch. I managed two poor photos before it flew off with a Brambling nipping at its tail.

this Pygmy Owl was perched very close in good light but unfortunately it flew off right after I got this picture. It didn't help that I was desperately trying to get Jr onto the bird

Our week in Mallorca involved little birding despite us staying in a hotel on the edge of the fantastic S’Albufeira wetland nature reserve. I birded very little and had no ‘scope and only took the old 70-300mm lens. There was a small hide overlooking a pool only 5 minutes walk from the hotel so I did of course visit that every day J

Best record was a flock of 32 Marbled Teal which I think originate from reintroduced birds as do the couple of Purple Gallinules I saw. In addition there were Black-winged Stilts, Flamingo, Audoin’s Gulls, Marsh Harrier, Booted Eagle, Stonechat, Fan-tailed, Cetti’s and Sardinian Warblers, Firecrest, Serin, Eleanora’s Falcon, Stone Curlew, Kingfisher plus plus so not too bad for a non-birding trip.

the smartest of the large gulls - Audouin's Gull (middelhavsmåke)

Black-winged Stilts (stylteløper)

a distant flock of egrets and a couple of Eleanora's Falcons against the distant mountains

Fan-tailed Warbler/Zitting Cisticola (cistussanger)

Two firecrests (rødtoppfuglekonge) - can you spot them?

young Flamingo

aliens

Alien sex

Kingfisher (isfugl)

Little Egrets (silkehegre) in the rain

Marbled Teal (marmorand) with Mallards

flock of Marbled Teal and Mallards

same flock in the rain

Marsh Harriers (sivhauk) were common

Purple Gallinule/Swamphen (sultanhøne)

using its feet to hold the reeds it eats

Speckled Wood butterflies look different here

Stone Curlew (triel

male Stonechat (svartstrupe)

 

Mallorca

A week long holiday has, despite a hotel within walking distance of S'Albufera, meant little birding but that has been just fine  :-)
A couple of short visits to the hides at S'Albufera did of course result in a few birds though.

adult Red-knobbed Coot - a couple of small things help separate this from its common cousin

juvenile Red-knobbed Coot - not so easy to separate from its common cousin

Purple Swamphen - note the incredibly long legs and how it uses them to hold the sedge grass that it bites off with its large bill

Little Egret

Garganey - the only one of its kind I could find amongst hundreds of Teal and Shoveler

whilst photographing this Golden Plover which I think is unusual here I completely missed the other bird lying down next to it (Stone Curlew)

this should definitely not have been here - a Harris Hawk which is a bird of North America and therefore an escapee

a Marbled Duck - along with the coots and swamphens these have been reintroduced to the marshlands of S'Albufera

A Coot with knobs on

Not much in the way of weekend birding but a trip to the seafront around the Opera building was successful in its goal of showing the girls Guillemots (lomvi) and Razorbills (alke) with three of the former and four of the later feeding offshore. The Pink-footed Goose (kortnebbgås) is still here and judging by the amount of droppings it is finding enough nutrients in the grass verges here. Driving home we could see the returning Peregrine sitting on the top of the Plaza hotel (Oslo highest building).
With no photos to show for my efforts this weekend, here are some images of the Crested (Red-knobbed) Coots (knoppsothøne) I saw on Mallorca.

Just look at those red knobs!

I didn't find out if the ring signifies a released bird or not

Little Egret

It is currently raining, cold and with winds from the north so not the sort of day when I am going to turn up anything exciting around Oslo. Instead here are some pictures and a video taken by my daughter (with her compact camera) of a very cooperative Little Egret (silkehegre) we saw in Mallorca. In the video note that it stirs with its foot to cause fish (or maybe shrimps?) to move such that it can see and capture them.