The strongest southerly winds of the autumn (sonfar) were forecast in
the outer Oslofjord so seawatching was on the cards again today. And
indeed there were many birds out there. Reports came in of thousands of
Fulmars (havhest), Great (storlire), Cory's (gulnebblire) and multiple
Sooty's Shearwaters (grålire) but that was all happening 60km south of
where I was sat. I was not able to start early today and chose
Krokstrand which is further north than Brentetangen and while maybe
having fewer birds does offer much closer views. On the way down a
message came through from Bjørn Olav that he was there already and had
seen a Grey Phalarope (polarsvømmesnipe).....a very promising sign!
I
was there 20 minutes later and the bird was not visible but was
presumed to be on the sea. It took an hour before the bird showed again
flying a few hundred metres before pitching down onto the sea. We saw it
a couple of times again over the next two hours but it was not easy
keeping track of it once it was sat on the sea as the waves were too
high.
Other than this fine bird though, 4 hours of sea gazing
produced only one Fulmar, 200 or so Guillemots (lomvi) heading north and
a single Arctic Tern (rødnebbterne). Clearly the winds were not strong
enough to force north all the interesting petrels and shearwaters being
seen off Ravn and Hvaler.
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