I won't give up

Southerly winds blew all day today so I stared at the sea at Brentetangen again. The winds are coming from the right direction but there are just no birds so presumably there are no birds further south to be pushed up. Maybe it’s too early in the autumn, maybe there are not the right winds further south to push the birds out of the north sea or maybe there is little food and there are just no birds?

I wrote yesterday that I was hoping for shearwaters, skuas or terns. Well, yesterday I had one shearwater (and a good one too) and today I had one skua and one tern. The skua was also a good one, being a dark phase juvenile Long-tailed Skua (fjelljo) that first went north and a few hours later returned going south. The tern was an adult Common Tern (makrellterne) which wasn’t so exciting....

There was some migration today with small numbers of Barnacle (hvitkinngås) and Greylag Geese (grågås) flying south. This corresponds well with my observation of far fewer geese in Kurefjorden yesterday. There were also a few waders migrating south with a Whimbrel (småspove), a couple of Knot (polarsnipe) and Dunlin (myrsnipe) positively identified, a flock of 20 calidris too far out to identify and a flock of 4 probable Red-necked Phalaropes (svømmesnipe) but these were also just a bit too far out.

In the trees behind my observation point was a mixed flock of passerines with Crested Tits (toppmeis), Chiffchaffs (gransanger), Spotted (gråfluesnapper) and Pied Flycatchers (svarthvit fluesnapper) the highlights.

Two new attempts with the new lens

Crested Tit

Common Eider (ærfugl)