Our third day on Store Færder was unfortunately also a slight disappointment with the small number of birds present the day before mostly having moved on with none to replace them and the ringing total was a miserly 10 birds!
Lack of birds on the main island (and there was nothing moving on the sea or in the air either) prompted us to get in the boat mid afternoon to check outerlying skerries and small islands. We chalked up a few waders before going on land at Hoftøya which is a small, flat island with some grass and lots of meadowsweet (mjødurt). I was hopefull that it would be hiding a rare pipit or warbler but what we did find would never have featured on even my possible list. I saw a movement and then heard an unmistakeable «ping» - a Bearded Tit!!! Now they do breed on either side of the Oslo fjord and this bird was only around 40km from a couple of breeding sites but they do not normally disperse so early in the autumn and why drop down on an island without reedbeds? It was a young male and on its own so maybe was just lost and driven by hormones? It will be up there for my bird of the year😊
Another adrenalin pumping moment was when a brown and white bird flew up. It took a while to refind and I was a little disappointed but then fascinated to work out it was a leucistic Rock Pipit!
The evening was windless and quite warm so we decided to keep the nets up and play Nightjar on the audio system. It did not produced the hoped for bird but whilst walking around with a headtorch I thought I saw an apollo butterfly fly into one of the nets. Getting close I realised it was a red underwing moth (pileordensbånd) but unfortunately it flew off before it could be photographed - it was a BIG moth!
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| A young male Bearded Tit (skjeggmeis) |
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| habitat |
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| Leucistic Rock Pipit (skjærpiplerke) |
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| Shags (toppskarv) are very numerous here |
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