OSLO BIRDER: Cold northerlies

Tuesday, 19 April 2016

Cold northerlies

Strong and cold northerly winds were never going to make today a great day for birding and sure enough I didn’t detect any evidence of new arrivals.

I started at Svellet where the light was quite good (the sun kept hiding behind clouds) and I was able to see everything that was there. After me commenting last week how low the water was it is now looking to be rising too much. Over the last three days the water has risen by 70cm!! I hope that this is just due to the rain we had at the weekend and with a dry week ahead forecast that the water levels will not rise anymore and even start falling again. If they do keep rising, then the wader migration will be ruined. Today there were 1500 Teal but the ONLY other ducks were 9 Wigeon. This shows how each species of duck specialises in different ways and whilst Teal obviously find conditions to be absolutely tip top this is clearly not the case for other species.

Wader numbers are going down. I had 99 Curlew (300 were counted at the weekend), 16 Oystercatcher and 9 Lapwing. If there still is low water at the end of next week, then the first Greenshanks and Wood Sands should have arrived.

At Årnestangen the Garganey pair is still present and looks very settled and will I believe stay and try to breed. Little else of note here except for a singing male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker which I had to locate and see to ensure it wasn’t an early Wryneck.

In Maridalen, 4 Ring Ouzels were on the field at Kirkeby. A Lesser Redpoll was singing (and has been around a few days) and this looks to be a species that has now established itself as a breeding species in the valley.