I was guiding Neil from London today and we managed to catch
up with a good selection of Oslo’s more special breeding birds. Starting at
Fornebu a male Red-backed Shrike (tornskate) was hunting from wires whilst his
mate is presumably on eggs. Marsh Warblers (myrsanger) were very obvious with
three singing males, one of which was paired and three singing Reed Warblers
(rørsanger) provided a good comparison of songs. A pair of Little Ringed
Plovers (dverglo) that transformed into a pair of Ringed Plovers (sandlo)
provided me with a bit of a headache until we saw there were pairs of both
species in the same place! Icterine (gulsanger) and Garden Warblers
(hagesanger) also sang here.
Moving up to Sørkedalen the male Red-breasted Flycatcher (dvergfluesnapper)
showed briefly although is less vocal than he was when first found. Three male
Common Rosefinches (rosenfink) were singing to each other in a small area and
the two we managed to see were both red males and two Hawfinches (kjernebiter)
flew over.
In Maridalen we had good views of a pair of Icterine
Warblers, Lapwing (vipe) with young, Black-throated Divers (storlom) and also
glimpsed a Goshawk (hønsehauk).
After dropping Neil off at the airport I had time to check
out a site in Nittedal (the valley to the east of Maridalen) where a Blyth’s
Reed Warbler (busksanger) has been singing. I didn’t expect to find it after
last night’s failure (that bird has been reported in the early hours of this
morning) but was pleased to hear it and then see it right by the road although
it was not “it” but “them” as there was a clear pair that were chasing each other around (or most likely the male chasing and the female playing hard to get). They are in gardens and
scrub/weeds in agricultural land along a ditch and must give the people living
there a fantastic nocturnal concert especially as there is also a singing Marsh
Warbler nearby and others have had a singing Quail (vaktel) here. Blyth’s Reed
Warblers are increasing in Norway although still occur at low densities. It is
therefore impressive that they find a mate. Hybridising with Marsh Warblers is
known to occur but both birds today and a pair I saw last year were all Blyth’s
Reed.
|
Blyth's Reed Warbler (busksanger) sticking its head out of a favoured bush |
|
in sunlight it looks quite pale and rather a lot of contrast on the tertials |
|
Add caption |
|
in shade it looks far greyer and less contrasting |
|
dancing on a fence |
|
for 5 seconds the Rd Fly popped onto these wires but I didn't have the camera ready and just managed one picture at far too high ISO |
|
male Common Rosefinch |
No comments:
Post a Comment