Slavonian Grebes

Slavonian Grebes (horndykker) breed fairly commonly on small ponds in Hedmark just over 100km from Oslo but in Oslo and Akershus it remains a very scarce breeding species with just a handful of pairs on ponds around Gardermoen airport. The species seems to be in expansion though and the now annual sightings of a pair on Maridalsvannet has hinted that there may be breeding not too far away. The discovery of a pair on a pond in Nittedal which is the (much larger) valet to the east of Maridalen seems to confirm this (this record was in fact the first record ever of any type of grebe in Nittedal). With heavy rain forecast today from 10am I thought I would head out after the girls had left for school. I avoided the heavy rain but it was gloomy which was a real shame as I had a fantastic time with the pair which came close although I was not close to their nest and in better light could have taken award winning pictures?! It really was gloomy and I just couldn’t get a high enough shutter speed to capture them with an acceptably low ISO as they were nearly always moving. Will need to revisit in better light…

This pond has previously held summering Whooper Swans (sangsvane) and one can hope that the two locations that Whooper Swans have favoured for breeding in Maridalen may one day also host Slavonian Grebes.

As the drizzle started a number of Swallows and House Martins fed low over the water and perched on waterside trees – again in better light and with better equipment I could have taken some mind blowing pictures – instead I took a load of cr*p ;-). I also had Great Spotted Woodpecker nesting right by the path and Grey Wagtails and Spotted Flycatchers – a great site!

 

Slavonian Grebe (horndykker). This is presumably the male and often swan with the ear tufts erect and wings hunched up like it was wearing a shawl

the female

 

Swallows (låvesvale) and House Martins (taksvale) taking a rest during the rain

White Wagtail (linerle), House Martin and 3 Swallows

Dipper with loads of lovely food for its youngsters

 

 

Blyth's Reed Warbler

I was guiding Neil from London today and we managed to catch up with a good selection of Oslo’s more special breeding birds. Starting at Fornebu a male Red-backed Shrike (tornskate) was hunting from wires whilst his mate is presumably on eggs. Marsh Warblers (myrsanger) were very obvious with three singing males, one of which was paired and three singing Reed Warblers (rørsanger) provided a good comparison of songs. A pair of Little Ringed Plovers (dverglo) that transformed into a pair of Ringed Plovers (sandlo) provided me with a bit of a headache until we saw there were pairs of both species in the same place! Icterine (gulsanger) and Garden Warblers (hagesanger) also sang here.

Moving up to Sørkedalen the male Red-breasted Flycatcher (dvergfluesnapper) showed briefly although is less vocal than he was when first found. Three male Common Rosefinches (rosenfink) were singing to each other in a small area and the two we managed to see were both red males and two Hawfinches (kjernebiter) flew over.

In Maridalen we had good views of a pair of Icterine Warblers, Lapwing (vipe) with young, Black-throated Divers (storlom) and also glimpsed a Goshawk (hønsehauk).

After dropping Neil off at the airport I had time to check out a site in Nittedal (the valley to the east of Maridalen) where a Blyth’s Reed Warbler (busksanger) has been singing. I didn’t expect to find it after last night’s failure (that bird has been reported in the early hours of this morning) but was pleased to hear it and then see it right by the road although it was not “it” but “them” as there was a clear pair that were chasing each other around (or most likely the male chasing and the female playing hard to get). They are in gardens and scrub/weeds in agricultural land along a ditch and must give the people living there a fantastic nocturnal concert especially as there is also a singing Marsh Warbler nearby and others have had a singing Quail (vaktel) here. Blyth’s Reed Warblers are increasing in Norway although still occur at low densities. It is therefore impressive that they find a mate. Hybridising with Marsh Warblers is known to occur but both birds today and a pair I saw last year were all Blyth’s Reed.

Blyth's Reed Warbler (busksanger) sticking its head out of a favoured bush

in sunlight it looks quite pale and rather a lot of contrast on the tertials

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in shade it looks far greyer and less contrasting

dancing on a fence

for 5 seconds the Rd Fly popped onto these wires but I didn't have the camera ready and just managed one picture at far too high ISO

male Common Rosefinch

Svellet shines and dodgy wheatear

According to the glb.no website have water levels in Nordre Øyeren fallen over the last few days so this gave me hope that there would be more waders at Svellet although a report from there yesterday recorded no waders and just hundreds of hirundines. It was therefore with great delight that I got out of the car and immediately could hear the machine gun call of Whimbrels (småspove) plus many Greenshanks (gluttsnipe). The distance is so great that you see nothing with the naked eye but as soon as the ‘scope was up I could see there were hundreds of waders. It is not easy going through them and I, at times, had trouble separating female Ruff (brushane) from Redshank (rødstilk) but I came up with totals of 550 Greenshank, 53 Bar-tailed Godwits (lappspove), 48 Redshank, 40 Wood Sandpipers (grønnstilk), 12 Whimbrel, 7 Spotted Redshank (sotsnipe), 7 Ruff, 4 Common Sandpipers (strandsnipe), 3 Dunlin (myrsnipe), 2 Oystercatcher (tjeld) and 1 Curlew (storspove)!! Large counts of Greenshank are to be expected here but the count of Bar-tailed Godwit is extremely high for inland Norway.

There is very little mud exposed but if water levels continue falling over the next two weeks there could be a real wader bonanza here and hopefully some real rarities will be unearthed although with the long distances here they will have to be large obvious rarities!

I had a chat with an opinionated local who couldn’t understand why birdwatchers were campaigning for water levels to be kept lower. He argued that the area was a wetland nature reserve and not a mud reserve – it was definitely one of the strangest conversations I’ve had and he refused to accept my “claims” that lower water levels were good for birds despite there being hundreds of waders out in the bay.

After some interesting reports from Nittedal yesterday I headed there. Nittedal is the valley to the east of Maridalen but is much larger with a proper river, Nittelva, which drains into Nordre Øyeren. It is therefore on the migration route of many birds and waders were hanging around in the damp corners of fields. Andreas Gullberg and Rune Z had also the same idea and we all turned up by the same damp field. Not too much to see on this particular field (although a puddle behind a petrol station held 8 Greenshank and 4 Wood Sandpipers!) except for a very pale wheatear. At first glance the sandy tones shouted Isabelline Wheatear (isabellasteinskvett)  but closer study showed it to in fact be a female Northern Wheatear (steinskvett) with a form for leucism. All the feathers were fringed with beige/brown including the tail which at rest looked brown although when spread in flight did look darker. This bird could definitely cause problems if not seen well!

Maridalen held 5 Whimbrel pre breakfast and 6 Greenshank post lunch but was otherwise not too exciting.

The distance to the waders in Svellet was too great for any meaningful pictures but a short video gives some sort of idea of how it is.

some of the 700+ waders in Svellet. The inset shows Bar-tailed Godwits

Here is the pale Wheatear - a really interesting bird

really sandy colour was very arresting

this is scarily like Isabelline including quite a broad dark terminal tail bar

it has mud on its beak but here you see how everything is just a sandy/beige colour

the dark underwing coverts exclude Issy

out of focus but you see how the whole bird is pale and the tail band is not black but has brown tones

 

Strange nightime noises

I couldn't resist another nocturnal outing yesterday this time choosing Nittedal as the main destination. In the end it was too cold and there was too much traffic noise such that I only heard some distant noises that I was unable to identify. At Hellerudsletta though I did hear a warbler singing and was able to get close to it in the dark. It was singing slowly and I was really unsure as to its identity for a long time. There were some extended periods of song when I was convinced I was listening to a Blyth's Reed (busksanger) but it failed to utter any of the characteristic notes of Blyth's and it did have short periods when it just sounded like a Marsh. On xeno-canto there are recordings which have been labelled as possible hybrid between the two species and this bird resembles them but there is so much variation within Marsh Warbler (myrsanger) that I’ve concluded it was just a laid back Marsh.

On the way home I had to try Maridalen although the Fieldfares (gråtrost) started making a din already at 01:45 which made it hard work. Two Marsh Warblers eventually announced their presence, Tawny Owls (kattugle) were calling at a new location and the Grasshopper Warbler (gresshoppesanger) was reeling away close to the lake and therefore much harder to hear than normally.
A Fieldfare (with a cold) had me going for a bit as it was making a noise very similar to a begging young Long-eared Owl (hornugle) but I eventually saw the bird. A Whinchat (buskskvett) started singing just after 2am and did an excellent mimic of both Common Rosefinch (rosenfink) and Yellowhammer (gulspurv) - I would have loved to have heard the Whinchat that apparently mimicked River Warbler (elvesanger) so well that birders were ticking it (I think it took a while before people realised it was a bit odd that it always sang (invisibly) from the same bush that a Whinchat was sitting in!).

Today I walked up to Dausjøen but failed to see the Whooper Swan (sangsvane) family although they could well have been in an area not visible to me. An Osprey (fiskeørn) was searching for food over the lake before eventually circling to such a height that it was just a black dot in the binoculars before drifting off north east. I disturbed one of the Wrynecks (vendehals) whilst it was feeding on the ground but didn’t succeed in locating a Marsh Warbler which I had hoped to be able to photograph.