A day to remember

At the weekend I walked with Beauty & The Beast (aka Mrs O.B and the dog) twice in Maridalen covering a lot of ground and seeing virtually nothing other than amazing landscapes caused by ice crystals, icy temperatures and colourful afternoon skies (this being caused by lots of particle pollution from wood burning stoves on days with no wind and low temperatures).

Today though I had a fantastic days birding and that despite having the Beast with me – perhaps we should be called the The Birder & The Beast 😊

In Maridalen we had a three hour walk and encountered two male Hazel Grouse (jerpe) who were singing just 50 metres from each other. Despite me being in the middle of them for around half an hour I only briefly glimpsed one of the birds as deep snow and my canine friend prevented me from moving in the terrain. Where I heard them is a site that I have visited for many years and has always been one of my most reliable ones and this bodes well for there being birds there this spring and summer.

I tried recording both of them singing on my phone but every time I took it out to record they shut up and I only managed one of them singing:

Much better than the grouse was a male Grey-headed Woodpecker. I found him when I was trying to find out why a Great Spotted Woodpecker was angry. I was hoping it would lead me to an owl but the result was much better than that. Also in the area was a Black Woodpecker so it is clearly pecker friendly and will be visited again. Grey-headed remains a very rare bird in and around Maridalen and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the same bird I saw last autumn.

male Grey-headed Woodpecker (gråspett)

My walk finished on a high when we got close views of a Pygmy Owl that gave itself away by singing close to the path.

Pygmy Owl (spurveugle) - their yellow eyes are just fantastic

The day was not finished though as I received a message that led me to Oslo’s first ever (observed) winter Jack Snipe. It was a very cool sighting of a bird in a stream (they find no other open water in the winter) and I hope that it is able to survive.

 

the first ever winter record of Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) in Oslo

this shot taken with the mobile has the snipe in the middle of the picture at the left of the island in the stream

On Sunday I paid a brief visit to the fjord which is starting to freeze over. In the Oslo docks there were around 700 Goldeneye (this is the largest flock in Norway) and a single Little Grebe which I watched catching and then struggling to swallow a large fish.

pollution hanging over the fjord which was icing over

Little Grebe (dvergdykker) - the colours reflected in the water are from shipping containers

this fish was really too large but it went down eventually. The video shows an unsuccesful attempt to swallow it