Warming up

The last 6 days have seen a number of new birds for the year with Crane, White-fronted Goose, Linnet, Woodlark, White-tailed Eagle, Teal, Reed Bunting, Grey Wagtail, Moorhen, Dunnock and Merlin all gracing my optics with their presence.

Sunday was a great day for visible migration and I joined Jack D in Maridalen to witness the first large movement of Pink-footed Geese. We had at least 2000 go right over our heads and managed to pick out 6 Barnacle Geese amongst them. We were looking for White-fronted Geese as well (the stomach barring on adults should stand out) without noting any but I took quite a few pictures and managed to pick out one from them (which had also been seen a bit to the south a few minutes previously).

I had a great day in the forest on Tuesday when I visited my Hazel Grouse and had him feeding and singing nearly at my feet. The female was nowhere to be seen (they are normally together at this time of the year) and given how much he was singing I fear something may have happened to her. A pair of Three-toed Woodpeckers turned up in the same area and I had both species from the same spot. I have also currently a pair of Three-toeds at another spot so things are looking good for nailing down both species this spring although it is still a month before the peckers will start nest building so they could still move on.

Black Woodpeckers are nest building in Maridalen and Lesser Spots showing regularly so hopefully they too will breed.

I visited the Woodlarks site again on Monday and 3-4 birds were now present and singing strongly – surely one of the best songsters we have.

Here are quite a lot of photos and videos but I feel the quality is so good they deserve to be shown 😀

A video of the Hazel Grouse and Three-toed Pecker taken with my phone (they were that close!)

And a video of the Hazel Grouse singing taken with the bazooka on a tripod

male Hazel Grouse (jerpe)

male Three-toed Woodpecker (tretåspett)

and a female

This video has the contact call of a Three-toed which is very similar to Great Spotted and often I cannot tell the different

Woodlark (trelerke)

and a video where you can hear its song

Barnacle Geese (hvitkinngås) migrating with Pink-footed Geese (kortnebbgås)

and a White-fronted Goose (tundragås) which I only picked up from looking at my pictures

my first adder (hoggorm) of 2022

nest building female Black Woodpecker (svartspett)

Coot (sothøne)

the first Cranes (trane) of the year over Maridalen

displaying Goldeneye (kvinand)

mating looks quite violent

my first Pink-footed Goose on the deck

Small Tortoisehell (neslesommerfugl)

a very early Common Snipe (enkeltbekkasin) in Maridalen

distant White-tailed Eagle (havørn)

Whooper Swans (sangsvane)

mating

male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (dvergspett)

Lesser Redpoll (brunsisik) which are already singing in Maridalen

Long-tailed Tit (stjertmeis)