It’s been a long while since my last post and it has been an
infuriating time but I’m sure I’ve written something similar many times before
at this time of the year. We have entered what a lull with sunny, dry weather
meaning no meaningful arrivals of birds and also difficult viewing conditions
especially at Årnestangen and Svellet where long distances and hear haze become
a real issue.
It is spring though and of course new birds are arriving but
it is a trickle and there is no volume of birds. Slavonian Grebes have made
their annual visit to Maridalsvannet, a visit that seems to come earlier and
earlier each year. Other species that have arrived early are Wryneck, Pied
Flycatcher, House Martin and Willow Warbler but raptor migration is still a
dream despite me trying from a variety of places – I have yet to see a Hen
Harrier let alone a Pallid..
I have just had two good days of guiding with Margie and
Greg from Wisconsin where we racked up 85 species with Wryneck, Lesser Spotted
Woodpecker, Ring Ouzel and Rough-legged Buzzard amongst them. Despite us starting
the day early it became quite hard going after around noon with the sunny
weather causing a real decline in activity. This sunny weather is forecast for
at least the next 10 days so I fear that the magical Svellet spring that I was
predicting may already be unlikely. The day we do get some rain though could
end up being one of those days though.
After guiding and drop off at the airport I continued north
for an evening in owl land. I twitched a Great White Egret on the way which I
actually managed to see from the motorway at 110km/h but did also stop to
admire a bit better.
Owls are a mixed picture. Ural Owls are giving me my best
ever joy with the species with two nest boxes that I have checked now being
occupied - this amounts to nearly 10% of the known Norwegian population!
Great Grey Owl though is a different story. I again visited
the two nests from last year and found no birds by the natural nest. By the
platform the female was still present but not on eggs. She is a strange one
though and gave herself away by bill clicking when I was still close to 50m
away and had not yet seen her. She is clearly territorial.
One person who knows a lot more about owls than me reckons
it is just still early in the season and that birds will nest and lay eggs whereas
another reckons the rodent population has collapsed. Time will tell but unless
they lay eggs in the next week or two it will be too late. In the Facebook
group Ugler i Norden there are updates from a platform that has a camera
watching over it. Here birds were first seen coming to the platform already 22
Feb and mating was observed from 7 April but the first, and so far only?, egg
was not laid until 2 months later on 21 April. This to me suggests a pair who
want to breed but are finding the food situation very borderline.
When in the forests a roadside female Capercaille was a
treat and I continue with my tree scratching whenever I see a suitable hole.
This time I did get a bird but and a Stock Dove was very unexpected given where
I was but why oh why couldn’t it have been a Tengmalm’s?
Six Slav Grebes (horndykker) on Maridalsvannet - an Oslo record count!
a single bird two days later may well have been in addition to the six
Two Ring Ouzels (ringtrost) - it always feel like a big relief when I see these in the spring as it is a species I never feel guaranteed to see in Oslo (but do)
female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (dvergspett) whilst guiding. This bird was making a lot of noise and was I reckon unpaired and getting desperate
my first Wryneck (vendehals) of the year and another good bird to see whilst guiding
a great looking old Black Woodpecker hole that I was sure would reveal a Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle) but instead and for me very surprisingly revealed a Stock Dove (skogdue). At least my tree scratching skills seem to be OK now.
roadside female Caper (storfugl)
Great White Egret (egretthegre)
Great Grey Owl (lappugle) - the same bird as in my previous owl post
Ural Owl (slagugle) - also the same bird as in my last owl post
but he she is with her mate (on the left). I have rarely encountered the male at a nest site and then they are normally much shyer than this bird seemed to be. He flew in after the female called and maybe felt he had a job to do
and Ural Owl nest #2. This box is old and the bottom starting to fall out perhaps suggesting that whoever put it up no longer checks it and I hope it survives the season
Maridalsvannet on Monday morning. Lovely weather but no many birds
a very long, straight road in Hedmark's deep forests
A pair of Ringed Plover (sandlo) is clinging on at Fornebu and here, and in the video, the male is creating nest scrapes for the females approval. The area they were doing it in was very close to paths and roads so I suspect they will struggle.
I finally managed to read the rings on the Mute Swan (knoppsvane) pair that is visiting Maridalsvannet this spring. Surprisingly they are not the same pair that bred last year which have established themselves at Fornebu now. This pair have been seen together since March 2025 when they were at Østensjøvannet but did not breed . The female P576 was ringed as an adult in 28km away in March 2017 so is a mature lady. She bred in 2022 with another mate but did not raise young whilst the male was ringed as a juvenile in November 2023 11km away and is so young that he wouldn't have been expected to breed before now
I have also seen Long-eared Owls (hornugle). They were a pair by an old Crow's nest but it did not appear that eggs had been laid yet
It is the middle of April and the next six weeks are the
most exciting of the year (in the Oslo area at least). In addition to many new
birds for the year there are also new birding sites to reacquaint myself with
and I have now competed my first walk to the end of Årnestangen for the year as
well as my first grilling of the mighty Svellet.
Conditions today at Svellet were magical and I have a small
but growing hope that this will be one of those Svellet springs that are
entered into the history books, or at least get remembered on this blog. Today
the water level (3.61m) was perfect and there were enormous areas of shallow
water and wet mud. 2000 Teal and 234 Curlew were both good counts and the quality
came in the form of a male Garganey, a Bar-tailed Godwit plus two very early
Ruff and a Redshank. The weather over the coming weeks will be key to whether
conditions remain perfect and we need just enough rain such that the mud doesn’t
dry up but not too much rain (or sun that causes lots of melt water to flow down
the river) such that water levels do not rise too quickly. I hope every birder
in Oslo and Akershus is praying to the Birds Gods.
Svellet from the eastern side. Even though I describe conditions as perfect the distances are very long and a scope is essential and even then not always enough to identify all the birds out there
and some of the Teal (krikkand) and also the Garganey (knekkand). As I said they are a long way away
Årnestangen has also delivered with another very early wader
in the form of a Whimbrel, an early Swallow and a good selection of raptors
including a Red Kite which flew low over my head without me seeing it but that
I then caught up with in the scope at about 6km range…
Taiga Bean Goose and Greylags at Årnestangen today. This is a relatively late bird as were the 4 Tundra Beans I saw yesterday
the bird was close to the Geylags in size and had a long slender neck and long thin bill with thin lower mandible.
I had a very enjoyable and successful morning guiding
Barbara from Canada on Monday and we saw 60 species including Jack Snipe, Black
and Red-throated Divers, Lesser Spotted and Black Woodpeckers. And if you don’t
believe my description then read Barbara’s 😊
one of three Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) at Fornebu. This bird has been regularly feeding in the open and to me looks very much like a Broad-billed Sandpiper...
and a more expected shot of a Jack
and a Common Snipe (enkeltbekkasin)
male Kestrel (tårnfalk) in Maridalen
and a Mistle Thrush (duetrost) in The Dale
Little Ringed Plover (dverglo) are back at Fornebu and will hopefully breed again this year
and Ringed Plovers (sandlo) are also back at last years nest site although they have less and less space available to them
Owls are an attractive species for guiding and generally the
larger they get the more sought after they are. The occurrence of most species
of owl in Scandinavia, and especially the exciting ones, though is correlated
with the abundance of rodents which goes in cycles. In the bottom year(s) of
the rodent cycle there may be no breeding of owls over huge areas and I have
heard of people going on organised trips to Finland especially to see owls and
not seeing a single one. In the top years though there can be many owls of a
number species and a visit in one of these years will have you scratching your
head when other people tell you they were in the same area the previous, or
next, year and saw nothing or had to work really hard for their one sighting.
After my success with Great Grey Owl last spring I already
have people booked to come over for Great Grey Owl this May but have tried to
make it clear that there is no guarantee there will be any breeding this year
and therefore without a nest to visit it will be very difficult to find any. I
have therefore been very anxious as to how it would be this year. My visits to
Owl Rd earlier in the spring revealed only a couple of Tengmalm’s and no GG
which was in stark contrast to last year however I have heard that it is better
further north in Hedmark, or at least in some areas there, and it therefore seems
that rodent numbers are varying locally.
I decided to keep on driving north to Hedmark on Wednesday
after having dropped Jr off at the airport and had an afternoon and evening to
see what I could find. It was still very early in the season (2 weeks prior to
my visit last year when I found two occupied GGO nests) and I did not find any
GGO on nests however I have it on good authority that less than a week before a
number of birds could be heard at night including by the natural nest I found
last year so the birds are clearly there and have just hopefully not laid eggs
yet – a visit in two weeks time will confirm the situation. I did have GG at
one site though and the bird which must have been a female came to greet me by perching
above me and snapping her bill. So, this bird which while not yet incubating
eggs on the nearby nest platform was acting in an aggressive way which clearly
suggests that she is at least getting ready to nest. What is important now is
that rodent numbers remain high enough for the owls to believe they can raise
at least some young to fledging. If rodent numbers are on their way down then
the owls may give up on their nesting attempts even if they have been singing
and mating.
I was happy that I did have one GG under my belt though and the
went looking for Ural Owl. I visited the area where I last had breeding birds
and a scratch of a tree trunk below a nest box resulted in a female flying out!
I really did not expect this to happen for two reasons: firstly Ural Owl
females are famous for sitting tight and often not leaving the nest even when
the nest box is opened up and two I had really begun to believe there must be
something wrong with my trunk scratching technique as it failed completely to
work last year with Tengmalm’s even when I knew a hole to be in use.
The owl proceeded to land in a nearby tree where it growled
at me and called gruffly. I am not sure what the calling was for – maybe to call
in the male (who I did not see) or perhaps meant to scare me off. Whatever the
reason, I did not stay long and hopefully she quickly returned to the nest. In
4 to 5 weeks if the eggs have hatched then she will perch close to the nest
whilst the young may be visible in the nest hole.
So, very exciting times are ahead but only if rodent numbers
don’t crash.
Here a few pictures and videos where you can see the anti
predator responses of the female of both species.
Greay Grey Owl (lappugle)
can you spot the Ural Owl (slagugle)?
My trip to Hedmark wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to Starene where there were still good flood waters and lots of geese including Tundra Bean and White-fronted. I do love this site! And I also had Wood Lark at one of their usual locations.
Starene
Woodlark (trelerke)
Some excitement came on the drive home when I saw smoke and
blue lights ahead of me and came across a burning car and fire trucks. A check
of the map showed that I had not alternative route and just had to sit it out.
It was exciting watching the firemen at work and thankfully I was able to find
out that nobody had been injured. The car had just started burning whilst I was
being driven and the driver stopped and called the fire brigade. Because it was
in the middle of nowhere it took a long time before the fire trucks arrived by
which time the car was completely ablaze. To illustrate how isolated we were, I
was the first car to arrive from my direction which must have been at least 20
minutes after the fire brigade were called and in the 45 minutes I was stuck
there only two other cars arrived behind me.
Whilst I was birding Oslo yesterday a message came through
that a Stone Curlew had been found at Årnestangen. With under 50 records it is
a national rarity and the only previous record in Akershus (it is still to be
seen in Oslo) came just last year. This year’s record is interestingly the
earliest ever in Norway. It goes without saying that I have not seen one in
Norway.
I didn’t really consider going for it even though from the photos
that were put out it was clear that the bird was at its daytime roost (they are
primarily nocturnal birds) and it didn’t move at all until it was almost dark.
In other words, it would have been an easy yet very boring twitch. I have to
admit that this apathy to twitching is just a tad extreme especially as I do
take my Akershus list seriously – I am just 7 species off the lead and everyone
who is ahead of me has been birding here for at least a decade and in some cases
3 or 4 more than me so there are bound to be species that will turn up that
they currently have over me.
I had no expectation that it would be present today (I am
more open to day 2 twitching) but whilst walking the dog a message came through
that it was again roosting in exactly the same spot. It was far easier today to
make the decision to twitch and it ended up being as easy as I expected and
also as boring. The bird was watched from a very safe range with lots of heat
have and it not doing anything but hey, a tick’s a tick 😊
Årnestangen was otherwise very quiet with only a few raptors
on a day that I had expected there to be many although a few Ospreys were my
first of the year and a young Peregrine put on an amazing show as it chased and
repeatedly dived at a Lapwing before eventually giving up allowing the Lapwing
to fight another day.
A quick check of Maridalen on the way home revealed the
first Black-throated Diver and Wheatear of the year.
Stone Curlew (triel). I am still debating with myself if this can be called a record shot but the video shows it better and I did manage to catch the only time when it did something other than sleep
and my first Wheatear (steinskvett) of the year on the same stones where I normally get my first bird
Yesterday saw me watching some big owls very well in Hedmark
and I will come back to them in a day or so but first an update from a good
days birding in Oslo.
Every spring the car needs its service and I use this carless
day to go out to the islands and today was that day. I only visited Gressholmen
but it was a good trip even though it is still way too early for anything that
exciting. However 3 Slavonian Grebes at close range were, as always, a treat
and they even displayed a bit. These, a Green Sandpiper and a Great Grey Shrike
which even sang a bit were all Oslo’s first records of the year..
After this a trip to Middelalderparken failed to reveal anything
rare among the few hundred gulls bathing there (although turnover is clearly
high so things can always turn up). A very pale mantled Lesser Black-back and a
yellow-legged and slightly dark mantled Herring Gull got some attention. I also
managed to fit in a trip to Østensjøvannet before the car was ready to be
picked up and thankfully didn’t need any additional work doing to it.
Slavonian Grebe (horndykker) pair
This video has lots of display and interaction between the birds
And this short extract shows some interesting display with what seems to be the unpaired bird trying its luck before being chased off. Note how it dives under water and then starts penguin displaying which gets a positive response from the other bird before its mate turns up
look at the reflection of the black head feathers
all 3 birds which were a pair and I believe a male
the pair of Smew (lappfiskand) still at Østensjøvannet
the yellow-legged Herring Gull that isn't a Yellow-legged Gull...
this pale backed Lesser-black Backed Gull (sildemåke) is ringed and its life history and other pictures suggest is an intermedius with some pigment problems (note that the primaries are not black) rather than a graellsii
Great Grey Shrike (varlser). It was intently staring at the ground in an area with lots of Water Vole holes but I did not see it catch one which would also have been a large prey item
I only discovered this Greylag Goose nest when it hissed at me as I almost stood on it
this young Herring Gull looks to have got some paint on it
there were 6 Ringed Plovers (sandlo) on Gressholmen which probably represent the entire Oslo breeding population
And a video of a drumming female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker from earlier in the week
