A Beastly Rhythm

 The Beast and I are now getting into a rhythm on our morning walks and I am able to sit down with the scope and also take pictures without him whining or pulling too much. The only thing that has been missing has been birds to study but today there was a lot more to see and three hours went by very quickly. A massive flock of 5 Slavonian Grebes were very close to land and it could almost seem that they were curious about the dog (as ducks often are). A pair of Black-throated Divers also showed us a lot interest and we had a very close encounter with a female Adder but here I had to tie Usko to a tree as he seemed hell bent on going up to the viper.

Swallows and Willow Warblers made their presence known and I heard, but did not see, flyover Greenshank and Wood Sandpiper which were both new for the year. It is (very) early for Wood Sand and the vast majority of early records (before 25 April) are undocumented and most likely relate to Green Sandpipers. I have now added another undocumented record to the data mass but at least the call is one of the best ways to separate the two species – it is the out of photo range sight records that are the problem..

Dog and Jr Jr walking yesterday evening revealed all the ducks from the  morning were still present on Maridalsvannet and had been joined by a male Red-breasted Merganser (unusual on the lake) and a noticeable increase in the number of Goldeneyes. I also had a singing Meadow Pipit which also remineded me of another difficult species pair as they do sound quite similar to Tree Pipit and you need to get your ear in each year.

this picture had a lot of promise but for the branches between me and the birds

I initially found two pairs of the Slavonian Grebes (horndykker) together

the bird on the right is not in full summer plumage yet. It is also a female I believe and the bird on the left a male with its larger "horns"

same female with white patches on her breast

and then another bird arrived calling

skimming along the water

the light was harsh and the birds mostly backlit. I took a couple of hundred pictures that I thought might be "artistic" but they were just rubbish

 

all 5 together

they really were close at times. The shadow on the right is The Beast

this pair of Black-throated Divers (storlom) also showed well

female Adders (hoggorm) just look so cool 

and this 2cy Peregrines (vandrefalk) was the only raptor on a day that had looked very promising (again...)