Liberation Day

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 2^nd 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