2bC invasion brewing

It looks like an invasion of Two-barred Crosbills is brewing. After my sighting on Monday of a bird with Common Crossbills in a spruce forest I was rather surprised to find a lone bird today in birch trees by Nordre Øyeren wetland. It was calling a lot and I managed to record it both the trumpet call and more generic crossbill call. This bird was also a juvenile but hopefully some adult males will arrive soon.

 I left Oslo to go to Øyeren as I hoped for some raptors specifically harriers but a single Marsh was the only one. Common Buzzards were numerous though and the local White-tailed Eagle family showed well. A single Great White Egret was a now to be expected bird but less than 10 years ago would have been quite the mega.

a streaky juvenile Two-barred Crossbill (båndkorsnebb)

I got fairly close but unfortunately it was high above me

this Little Grebe (dvergdykker) is my first ever at Nordre Øyeren and seems to be a surprisingly rare species there

Great White Egret (egretthegre) AND White-tailed Eagle (havørn)

with such a large bill this must be the adult female eagle

dwarfing a Hooded Crow 

hunting like a harrier

the juvenile

and the adults trying to get cosy

a Goosander (laksand) flock in Maridalen

wing drying Cormorant (storskarv)

female Three-toed Woodpecker (tretåspett)

Two-barred Crossbill

We are now entering that exciting period of the autumn when I should be telling you about my upcoming trip to a wind blown island in search of eastern magic. This year though does not look to be shaping up in the right way such that I have not definite plans in place yet although may travel spur of the moment if the weather looks promising and others have the same thought.

Hopefully though this will be the year for multiple eastern magic in Oslo and maybe increased searching will result in more being found?

I have my ears tuned in for the call of Yellow-browed Warbler already and as the autumn progresses maybe this will be the year for an Olive-backed Pipit or Little Bunting.

 

I was out in the forest today checking up on the Honey Buzzard nest (they seem finally to have left) and although I did not hear a YbW I did hear a trumpet call from amongst a 50 strong flock of Common Crossbills and after a bit of work laid my eyes on a Two-barred Crossbill. It was a streaky juvenile and makes one wonder how far away from here it hatched. I already have the species on my #Oslo2024 list with a heard only bird close by on June7th and this raises the otherwise unlikely prospect that they actually bred in Oslo this summer.

it was misty in the forest so I felt lucky to get a picture of the 2bC

juvenile Two-barred Crossbill (båndkorsnebb)

And the northern lights on Saturday over Maridalen

Into the Taiga

Two days of guiding with Darrel, Tony and Stewart was great fun, tiring and nearly 100% successful.

The targets were of course the Oslo Taiga Trio but with two days at our disposition we also had a day planned to look for Sibe Jay a couple of hours north of Oslo in real taiga forest.

Hawk Owl fell easily on day 1 with 2 birds seen at their usual spot including one which showed low down. Pine Grosbeaks did not show in Oslo (as expected as the birds I found last Friday are the the last records in the big smoke) but we did connect on day 2 in proper Taiga forest. GGO would just not play ball despite many hours and many kilometers which was made even more galling when I received a mobile phone photo (taken by a non-birder) of said GGO on a wire by the roadside taken whilst we were searching less than a kilometer away...

Day 2 birding was a thorough success though. We entered a taiga winter wonderland with the snow at the side of the road over a meter deep, blue skies and no wind. The target of Siberian Jay took a while coming but we eventually had amazing views of a group of three birds. Pine Grosbeak also showed really well in its proper Taiga habitat rather than on a street in Oslo. We had all 3 Crossbills with at least 10 Two-barreds, Golden Eagle, Willow Tits, Mealy Redpolls, Nutcracker and 3 of us glimpsed a Pygmy Owl although unfortunately it was Stu who missed it (due to where he was sat in the car) who was the only one who needed it as a lifer...

the boys admiring Hawkie

and here Sibey

this is what winter should look like

female Pine Grosbeak

Nutcracker

male Two-barred Crossbill

another slightly less red male 

and another even more orange (rather than red) male

Willow Tit

I didn't say that we had good views of the Golden Eagle...

Way too much action!

Quite a lot has happened since Sunday with two absolute highlights that involved so much boot filling that I have over 1700 pictures and loads of video to go through. This blog post will therefore only show a couple of pictures of these highlights whilst I find the time to work through the gigabytes of hopefully award winning 😉 images on my hard drive.

The last two days have, of course, been about yet more searching for the taiga specialities and the weather has been perfect for it: overnight frosts, no wind and sunny skies.

Yesterday I slogged around in the forest and was rewarded with a minimum of three male Two-barred Crossbills as well as Parrot and Common Crossbills and 5 Pine Grosbeaks including a male which showed well if only briefly. The absolute highlight of yesterday though was prolonged and point-blank views of a male Hazel Grouse. I was able to sit down and have it feeding and singing around me seemingly unaffected by my presence. It was the sort of privileged experience that the bird gods only rarely bless people with 😊

Today, I was out with Anders and we hoped to repeat yesterdays success. This was not to be but Stig Mr.Grosbeak Kalvatn sent me a message that he had had a flock of 16! Grosbeaks feeding by his house when he walked the dog this morning. Anders and I cut short our forest endeavors with just Common Crossbill to reports and headed for Stigs hood. After a bit of searching we found them in exactly the same berry tree (similar to Rowan but some other species) and then filled our boots for a whole two hours. We “only” had 9 birds but these included 2 red males who initially were not photogenic although eventually showed well. The lighting was difficult but has I hope resulted in some interesting pictures and we were able to watch the birds at around 5 meters range. Pine Grosbeaks are now turning up in record numbers in southern Norway and with there still being lots of berries in suburban Oslo I am sure that the winter will offer many more experiences like this although I will have to limit the number of photos I take next time.

First a couple of pictures of each of the highlights (hopefully better to come):

male Hazel Grouse (jerpe)

male Pine Grosbeak (konglebit)

And now, the also rans..

male Two-barred Crossbill (båndkorsnebb)

female and male Parrot Crossbill (furukorsnebb)

two females looking suitably large billed although this species can sport a large bill

male Parrot

female Parrot

male and female Parrot with a juvenile crossbill. It would be an obvious assumption that this bird is also a Parrot

but here we see it close up and that bill is not THAT large. It is my understanding that a young crossbills bill should be fully grown by this age (the bird is not a recent fledgling) which would suggest this is a Common Crossbill accompanying adult Parrots. But there were plenty of Common Crossbills in the same area and it is my experience that these two species don't mix so I am unsure.. 

and here are a couple of Common Crossbills (grankorsnebb) which were only 150m away from the Parrots 

male Common Crossbill

Waxwings (sidensvans) - note the very different wing markings. The bird on the right with broad white borders to the flight feathers plus a lot of the red waxy growths is an adult male whilst the bird on the left is an adult female.

Nutcracker (nøttekråke)

this was my best picture of yesterday's male Pine Grosbeak and normally I would have been very happy with that sort of view