Røst day 4

Day 3 can only be described as bad. It had clouded over during the night but the cloud was high up and there was no rain. No new birds seemed to have arrived and others had definitely moved on so. A skulky Dunnock was the only excitement I had and I spent much of my time reading the messages that kept coming in of amazing birds on Utsira (where quite a few Oslo birders, if not The Oslo Birder 😉, are at the moment) Grey-cheeked Thrush and Red-eyed Vireo from the west and a Raddes Warbler from the east were birds I would have liked to see on Røst….

I used the thermal imager a bit and found a single Jack Snipe and 2 rats…

I have about an hour of birding tomorrow before catching the ferry back to Bodø. A lot can happen in an hour…(or not).

Today’s eBird checklist can be seen here.

Brown Rat with a well patterned face

Spot the Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin)

I got some better pictures of the Taiga Bean Goose

A flock of Pink-footed Geese (kortnebbgås) dropped in

Jacky

Northern lights last night

Another rat

Chiffchaff (gransanger) was the only warbler today

This male Redpoll has a small bill but must be a Common (gråsisik)

It is not often I take pictures of Raven but they are very bold here

Plastic

The Pintail x Mallrd hybrid showed a bit better today with a single Pintail

Orangey legs

Green speculum

Røst day 3

Cloudless blue skies and a fresh easterly wind meant as expected a bit of a clear out with no new arrivals except perhaps for a small increase in Redwings.

My undoubted highlight was getting even better views of an adult Gyr Falcon than yesterday. It appeared to be a different, larger bird and it is unusual to see adults out on the coast. Normally young birds move to the coast whilst the adults remain close to their breeding territories.

As a sign of how quiet things were the other highlights were a hybrid duck and a plastic duck. A female Pintail x Mallard hybrid was a first for me but seemed to be a quite obvious hybrid between these two species even though female hybrids are much more difficult to identify than males. The plastic duck was a male Mandarin. I could try to argue that it was shy and if a Two-barred Greenish can turn up here then surely a wild duck from China can but it has been around for ages…☺️

Today’s eBird checklist can be seen here.

Tomorrow is forecast to be cloudy with possibly some drizzle which should mean new, and hopefully exciting, arrivals.

Adult Gyr Falcon (jaktfalk)

And the smallest falcon - a Merlin (dvergfalk) chasing a Hooded Crow

Young Peregrine (vandrefalk) chasing a Ruff (brushane)

Female Pintail x Mallrd hybrid (stjertand x stokkand) with a female Pintail

The hybrid at the bottom with an upperwing looking very like a Pintail

The head pattern, leg colour, tertials and tail resemble Mallard but the rest is more Pintail

A poor photo but the green of the speculum can be seen

Male Mandarin coming out of eclipse plumage

Golden Plovers (heilo) here are tame and also garden birds

The Taiga Bean Goose 

Twite (bergirisk)

Snow Bunting (snøspurv)

Arctic Redpoll (polarsisik)

I cycled a lot today and only clocked up 11663 steps

Røst day 2

My second day on Røst, although the first in daylight was a great success even if there was no major rarity (Norway’s second Two-barred Greenish Warbler which was found earlier in the week has unfortunately moved on now). This is actually my third visit to Røst after a summer visit in 2000 when I saw Snowy Owl and a visit in late September 2003 when I stayed for a couple of days without seeing too much (although my name is the NSKF rarities report for being a co-finder of an American Golden Plover which I remember very little about).

We were 8 birders on Røst today and the nature of the island makes it much easier to cover on foot than Værøy and with far less vegetation then we should discover a far higher percentage of the birds present than on Værøy. Røst has far more wetlands than Værøy so there are many more waders and ducks but there are fewer passerines especially thrushes and finches.

I have walked 28,473 steps today and am rather knackered so I will keep this brief now😊. The two highlights for me were an adult Gyr Falcon close enough for photos (all my previous sightings of Gyr have been long distance) and hearing, and of course seeing, Yellow-browed Warbler which is a very necessary part of every autumn.

Other good birds were Olive-backed Pipit, Tree Pipit (which is rarer here than OBP), Taiga Bean Goose, Arctic Redpoll and my first Black-tailed Godwit in Norland. The full eBird checklist can be seen here.

Looking north with Værøy to the right and the rest of the Lofoten islands

Sunrise on Røst

Looking south

Yellow-browed Warbler (gulbrynsanger)

Adult Gyr Falcon (jaktfalk)

Olive-backed Pipit (sibirpiplerke)

And for comparison a Tree Pipit (trepiplerke)

Black-tailed Godwit (svarthalespove)

Arctic Redpoll (polarsisik)

Golden Plover (heilo)

Long-tailed Duck (havelle)

Taiga Bean Goose - a large billed bird that may come from a long way east in Russia