The sightings and occasional thoughts of an English birder in Oslo
Tuesday, 27 June 2023
Broad-billed Sandpipers and friends of the mountain marsh
Time now for the first instalment of my 24 hour birding
and butterflying trip to the mountains and forests north of Oslo last week. The
spur of the moment trip was spurred by the seemingly easy chance of seeing
displaying Broad-billed Sandpipers accompanied by warm, sunny weather. I have
seen quite a few BBS on passage and have seen them twice on their breeding
grounds including once very closely but I have never seen or heard them displaying
and it was almost bucket list desire. They normally breed on quite large and inaccessible
bogs but evidence I had been sent to my phone suggested that the birds Per
Christian had seen was anything but inaccessible. The location was a marsh at
over 1100m and consequently way above the treeline which was not how I have
pictured the preferred habitat for this species. The area is known to hold a
number of other birds including Red-necked Phalaropes and my plan was to spend
the night and experience lots of activity very early in the morning. I arrived
in the early evening though and with it never getting truly dark I was able to
bird straight away and to be honest hit the jackpot before bedtime.
The BBS did not quite live up to my expectations but
I had it in its display flight on a number of occasions including low over my
head but I never got to see it properly on the ground. Every time it finished a
display flight it would plummet down into the marsh only about 20m from where I
stood but then it would just vanish. Only once did I glimpse it on the ground
and I think it was living up to its Norwegian name of Mountain Marsh Runner (fjellmyrløper).
This video has a bit of its display flight including song.
Broad-billed Sandpiper (fjellmyrløper) in display flight
flight shots aren't getting any easier
Red-necked Phalaropes showed a lot better although
it took me a long time to see them closely although they then performed very
well. Although I think some birds had settled down to nest there was a group of
females flying around, calling and seemingly looking for unpaired males.
female Red-necked Phalaropes (svømmesnipe)
at sunrise
do you see it?
Lapland Buntings were also present and 4 singing
males makes this one of the best localities in southern Norway of a species that
is declining fast. A lack of rodents meant that a single Kestrel was the ONLY
raptor or owl I saw.
male Lapland Bunting (lappspurv)
male Willow Grouse (lirype) in a place where the white feathers really help it blend in
Wood Sandpiper (grønnstilk)
male Grey-headed (Yellow) Wagtail
even this bird has a hint of a white supercilium
trying to be arty
on a lake on the tree line at 965m a pair of Slavonian Grebes showed well
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