Owls

I was recently challenged on Facebook to post a bird picture a day over the course of a week. I accepted the challenge and decided to post a different species of owl from Norway each day. For those of you who've not seen them on FB, here are the pictures. All the pictures are already on the blog but with some I've improved the original picture, for example I've lightened up the shadows on the Ural Owl.
And as a bonus there are also three owl species that didn't make the final FB cut.

Great Grey Owl (lappugle)

Ural Owl (slagugle)

Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle)

 

Long-eared Owl (hornugle)

Tawny Owl (kattugle)

Hawk Owl (haukugle)

Pygmy Owl (spurveugle)

So I managed pictures of seven species of owl taken in Norway and there are still three species that I have not shown. Here are the three remaining species but my pictures are not so good.

Snowy Owl (snøugle)

Eagle Owl (hubro)

Short-eared Owl (jorduge) together with a Marsh Harrier (sivhauk)

Værøy itching

This time tomorrow I will be wading knee deep in sibe rares and drowning in wing bars.

The weather forecast is, if anything, improving. The one thing lacking from the forecast 2 days ago was some rain to bring the birds down but now it looks like I am even going to get that. I am also now having the company of John Stenersen on Thursday and Friday so we'll be able to cover more ground.

I found this old print picture of a Snowy Owl today taken on Værøy's neighbouring island of Røst in June 2000. Would be nice to see one of these again

A year for owls

There has been little time for birding recently. I completed the famous Birkebeiner mountain bike ride at the weekend - 94km over the mountains from Rena to Lillehammer in central norway and despite going through fantastic habitat the only bird I noticed was a single Nutcracker. I think I was too focused on the road and trying to ignore the complaints I was receiving from my body to notice anything else.
Great news has just been published of at least 38 breeding pairs of Snowy Owls in northern norway this year. One report I read said it was teeming with them in Finnmark and implied you couldn't miss them. Well Per Christian and I certainly managed to miss them despite some dedicated searching. 14 breeding pairs of Great Grey Owls have also been discovered this year in a relatively small area of Hedmark so the "rodent year" has definitely resulted in good conditions for owls even if I haven't been so lucky.
Maybe as the autumn progresses there will be sightings of owls in unusual places as the young will certainly start wandering. Maybe I can turn up both Snowy and Great Grey Owls in Maridalen?