Last Wednesday Per Christian and I took one more (final?)
trip to Owl Road with the hope of connecting with the two big owls that I had
had the week before. This was not to be but it was a good night for Tengmalm’s
Owls which were again singing at sites where I had heard them in mid February
but not since. This suggests that there was indeed a crash in rodent numbers
when the snow melted very quickly but that numbers are now on there way up
giving the owls hope that they will be able to breed successfully. At the site
where I filmed the hooting Tengmalm’s a couple of weeks previously he was again
singing loudly and regularly when we arrived.
What was even better though was that he was visiting and singing from a
nest hole and there were two birds. I got some footage I am very happy with and
even caught on film how the males song changed when the female called which is described
in the Sound Approach as engagement hooting.
We also had some pretty spectacular northern lights.
There are two videos. The first one is my Director's Cut and has long sequences of singing just to give the idea of how constant it was. The second is a shorter version. In both though you hear the regular song then the calls of the female from behind me and then the immediate change of the males hooting to a quicker, quieter and almost continuous series.
male Tengmalms's Owl (perleugle) who was singing from his chosen nest hole
It is very dry at the moment and gets warm in the afternoons
but at night in Maridalen there is still a frost. The ice on the lake is
visibly thinning and the ice free area at Hammeren is expanding during the day
but come the next morning much has frozen over again.
These are not great conditions for attracting birds onto the
fields though and there is VERY little to see with the flocks of Mistle
Thrushes and Bramblings having moved on with the thrushes having moved to their
local breeding sites in the forest and the Bramblings to breeding sites further
north.
I am determined to find a Red Kite this spring and with
Maridalen not playing ball I decided to drive to the south east yesterday but
this didn’t result in anything other than a few Common Buzzards. Sky gazing in
Maridalen today gave quite a few Pink-footed and Greylag Geese with Greylag now
migrating in larger flocks than earlier. A few Cranes also went north as did a
single Sparrowhawk (I also had some local Sparrowhawks, Goshawks and Common
Buzzard) but the raptor of the day was a Marsh Harrier heading south west of
all directions.
A male Pintail has joined an increasing number of Mallards
and is clearly in love with a female Mallard who he is noisily displaying to.
A trip to the Mighty Svellet yesterday revealed an early
group of 24 Curlew and the conditions currently look fantastic but what they
will be like in a months time when the real fun starts is anyones guess.
I write this on April 2nd 2025 the day that the
Great Orange Clown has named “Liberation Day”. Let us hope that following this
day the Red Kites feel liberated enough to show themselves to me rather than
there being erected barriers to migration 😉
a very fine male Pintail (stjertand)
no rings. There have in previous years been Pintails in the Oslo area with pastic rings and which have therefore jumped the fence but this one has no obvious sings of plasticity
female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (dvergspett). The birds in Maridalen have suddenly gone quiet suggesting they are paired up as was this bird.
and the male
today's rarest bird was an early Marsh Harrier (sivhauk)
one of the local Common Buzzards (musvåk). I am unsure if it has nesting material in its talons or has picked up some grass at the same time it tok prey. It was calling over its presumed nest area
migrating Cranes (trane)
a singing Dunnock (jernspurv)
I am now up to 3 butterfly species this year. Here a Brimstone (sitronsommerfugl)
and a Camberwell Beauty (sørgekåpe). Small Tortoiseshell (neslesommerfugl) is the other species I have seen
