Little birding

The half term holiday continues, and we have remained around Oslo. Birding, even of the incidental variety, has been minimal and my few outings have revealed little.

A short early morning trip to check the sea off Bygdøy (the first snows have come in the mountains which often is the push that seaducks and the last waders need to move on) revealed a few birds with Red-throated Diver, Great Crested Grebe, Razorbill and Guillemot on the sea and best of all a Rock Pipit on the rocks offshore. This species is regular in the inner Oslo fjord but is rarely seen as it is normally found on islands only accessible by boat so a bird on the “mainland” is always nice to see. My pictures are not the best but do show how different Rock Pipits can look depending on the light and show the risk in identifying the very rare (in Norway) Water Pipit just based on a single (or poor) photos.

A walk around Fornebu gave good views of Razorbills and Guillemots feeding close offshore and with more time and the bazooka v.2 I could have taken some good photos of the two species side by side.

Rock Pipit (skjærpiplerke). Looking very classic here - dark and olive grey 

with the sun on it it looks paler and browner

and here it almost looks white under with very pale legs

Razorbill (alke) and Guillemot (lomvi)

another Razorbill

the same bird as above