Yellow Wagtail variation

A species that was overdue in Maridalen this year was Yellow Wagtail. I had been expecting them to turn up as soon as the first field was ploughed but had to wait a couple more days. I think the reason for the late return is that we have still been having frosts at night and that they stop their northerly movement when they hit a frost.

Today though there was no frost, the southerly winds were fresh, the fields had been tilled and there 20 Yellow Wags running around. Here in Norway the expected race is thunbergi and it is reasonable to assume that all birds I saw were this race. There was a lot of variation though in both head colour and presence of, an extent of, a supercilium. The textbook male thunbergi has a dark grey head and no supercilium but the reality is far more complicated. The head colour can range from black to a bluey grey and they can often have quite prominent superciliums. Whether this variation is a natural variation amongst thunbergi or an expression of integration with other races is beyond my knowledge but flava are very rarely observed away from a few locations on the south coast where they breed so I cannot see where this integration occurs in a large enough scale to produce so many birds with white superciliums. A number of birders insist of identifying bird with superciliums as flava but this is plainly wrong and a pure flava needs to show a bluey head, very prominent white supercilium and the famous white subocular patch. There were only a couple of females present today and their subspecific identification is an area I have no desire to enter.

There were also good numbers of Wheatears and the male / female ratio is now 50:50 whereas there were only males a couple of days ago.

I had hoped that the southerly wind and cloud cover would bring some obvious migrants either as viz mig or on the lake but the only thing we saw was a flock of 13 Cormorants heading north which judging by their hesitant nature were carbo heading for breeding grounds in northern Norway. I used to see these migrating flocks regularly but in recent years they have become a scarce site whereas sinensis are becoming a common site on lakes and the fjord.

Bird of the day was probably a Hobby which by its behaviour was one of last years breeding birds and it will be interesting to see if its mate also returns.

Western Yellow Wagtail (gulerle). This bird has a particularly dark head that could make one think of feldegg

a fairly prominent super and a hint of blue in the crown would cause many to label this as flava. But it lacks the subocular patch and the head is far too dark grey

a dark head that is more normal thunbergi but a thin supercilium which it shouldn't have..

a female probably thunbergi (as would be expected) due to the dark necklace

the same bird as above

Hobby (lerkefalk) - it looked like it caught something but there are no dragonflies yet so I'm not sure what it was

Wryneck (vendehals)

migrating Cormorants

this faded 2cy gull was small and long winged and I was sure it was a Lesser Black-backed but the pale primary window in flight must make it a Herring?