Jr and I went on our planned trip to Owl Road on Friday night but the results of our endeavours was far from those planned. The weather was pretty good with clear skies and no wind and temperatures just under zero. The only negatives I can think of were no moon and following the warm temperatures we have had most of the snow has melted and there was noise from flowing streams but we could still hear well. The result was just two Tengmalm’s and one Tawny and we covered a lot of ground. I am at a loss as to explain why there are far fewer singing owls now but maybe rodent numbers have declined since the snows started melting. Alternatively things may be so good that the owls are already nesting? It is still very early though and a visit in a few weeks time may well reveal completely different numbers.
The clear skies did allow us to planet gaze and although we were able to see all 7 planets we did see Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury. We looked at the planets from Udenes Kirke where we could see the western horizon well but it was still too light for us to see Saturn just before it disappeared under the horizon. Attempts to find Neptune and Uranus in the telescope were hampered by not knowing how to distinguish them from stars…
The location was chosen to see the Taiga Beans coming into roost which they did a full 48 minutes after sunset and from photos I could see they were still 54 birds. The GPS tagged bird and presumably the whole flock had been on the chosen field since dawn with no visits elsewhere which means they are not being disturbed and are hopefully eating well.
Udenes Kirke and the Glomma River at 17:55 16 minutes after sunset
and the view over the river at 18:27 when the geese came in 48 minutes after sunset
we first heard the geese coming (as can hopefully be heard in the video) before making them out again the red sky
the white area of the river is the disturbed water where they landed
planets: from top left, Venus, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter and its four moons
Jupiter later an hour and 14 minutes later when the position of the moons has changed
