Thursday videos

Here are the videos from Thursday.

We arrived at the Great Grey Owl nest at 20:00 and it took a while before we saw the young and they gradually became more visible, active and noisy but it wasn’t until 21:14 that dad arrived with food. This is in contrast to six days previously when we witnessed three food deliveries in under an hour from 18:58 onwards. The young are coming along well so I don’t think there is a question of lack of food but maybe different weather plays a role. Thursday was a sunny day whereas six days previously had been overcast and therefore darker earlier on (I also noted that Woodcocks were first active later much earlier last week).

The mother really does seem to be good at her job and still shelters the young between her wings and she probably has not left the nest in close to two months. When the food delivery finally came we could not see what had happened but the female was definitely not feeding the young by tearing off strips of meat so I thought that maybe she had swallowed the vole herself which then had me questioning her motherly instincts. The video however shows that one of the young (the middle one?) took the vole from her and swallowed it whole! Things have definitely moved on from six days previous when she was feeding them tiny morsals of flesh individually.

I have two videos from the nest. The first is just the food delivery sequence where I also captured the male flying in on my phone and the second and much longer video has various snippet of action from the whole period we watched them.

 

Here is footage of the hunting GG we spotted along the road. Initially perched on a wire by a house he then made an unsuccessful plunge for a rodent before moving to fence posts. You can also see how he changes his posture in response to a Hooded Crow flying over.

 

Here are a pair of Red-necked Phalaropes

And finally, Norway’s only registered singing Ortolan Bunting in 2025. The nest I found in 2023 may end up being the last breeding of this species in the country as last year just two unpaired males were recorded and I did not see anything on Thursday to suggest that this male who has now been back over 2 weeks had a mate.

Holiday driving

Yesterday was a bank holiday in Norway and Jr and I used it to take a looooong drive. She takes her driving test on Monday and is keen to get in driving practice and I have places I want to bird but no longer find the long drives much fun. It is therefore a win win if I get chaffeured and Jr gets the practice she wants. We were out 13 hours and clocked up just shy of 600km. The destination was a first trip to the mountains for the year. Not Beitostølen / Valdres but Ringebu which I have developed a taste for.

First stop was to check out a Tengmalm’s nest that Per Christian and I had discovered in April. No bird showed and I am really beginning to think it is my trunk scratching technique that is the problem rather than there never being owls in the holes. A very small and rare butterfly was a good compensation though with a few violet copper (fiolett gullvinge) on the road verge. I have previously found a very healthy population a couple of kilometres away and this very normal looking area of open pine forest clearly holds good numbers of what otherwise seems to be a declining species.

After this we headed higher and above the tree line. There was no snow but it was all very brown and the birches on the tree line were yet to come into leaf. The lake and marshes I was headed for were ice free and there were quite a few birds but clearly a number of migrants are not back yet. Although there were fair numbers of Yellow Wagtails and Meadow Pipits I found no Bluethroats, Lapland Buntings or Wheatears which should be numerous. There were also no raptors, owls or grouse so it is clearly not a rodent year in these mountains.

Waders were back though. My target was Red-necked Phalarope and two pairs were probably only just in. Redshank, Wood Sandpipers, Golden Plover were also all on territory and there were 3 or 4 calidris waders in song flights at some distance that gave me a bit of a headache. When I initially heard the «song» I identifed them as Broad-billed Sandpipers but then I started hearing Dunlin and a Dunlin landed close to me. I assumed they were all the same species as they were flying around together and then started thinking I had misheard and they were all Dunlins.

Lucky though I did take some terrible distant photos and there were clearly both species flying together. I now wish I had walked further into the marshes (my feet were already wet anyway) and tried to see them properly.

After this we needed to get some food and headed for Elverum where after a McD we then visited Norway’s only known singing Ortolan and then the GGOs. This time we had to wait over an hour for a feed but it was fun watching mum and the young getting increasingly hungry and impatient. Then driving home we had a roadside GG hunting in someones garden 😊

Today, a post on Facebook reminded me that it was about time I twitched a butterfly. Scarce Heath (heroringvinge) is rare in Norway but occurs on a couple of islands (one of which is connected to the mainland) only 6km from Fornebu. They were easy to find and the habitat - some open ground backing onto gardens - looked very ordinary. This species seems to be extremely sedentary and although it can be well established in one small site seems unable to expand onto other sites just a few hundred metres away.

I’ll post pictures now and will come back with videos which should be good although knowing me I will have failed to press the record button when I thought I had.

a male Red-necked Phalarope (svømmesnipe)

and a female. This is one of the very few species where the female is the more colourful of the sexes

habitat

Dunlin (myrsnipe) and Broad-billed Sandpiper (fjellmyrløper). I regret now not trying to get closer to the area they were displaying over

size difference is just about possible to make out

Norway's only known singing Ortolan Bunting and the same bird I found on 10 May. Nothing suggested he had found a mate

Great Grey Owl (lappugle) watching. I should have some good video

the three young are growing and the two oldest are now grey instead of white. The third and smallest is just visible to the left of the other two behind the branch

one young was hiding under mums wing

and then climbed on top of her

male Violet Copper (fiolett gullvinge)

and the subject of today's twitch a Scarce Heath (heroringvinge)

Great Grey update

I had my fourth visit to my Great Grey Owl nest on Friday when I was guiding Achim from Germany. We arrived at the owl around 18:40 on a cloudy day to find the female sitting high in the nest. After a while she clearly tended to young although we could not see them beneath her protective wings. She gave her «feed me» call a few times and then at 18:58 the male (who was unseen) hooted softly to our right. This caused the female to get very excited and we also heard calls from the young. The male then glided silently to the nest with a vole in his bill and the female gave her chittering call. He gave her the vole before flying off to observe us and flying nearly over us and off to hunt again. We then watched the female tear off strips og meat to individually feed each of her three young. There were clear size differences but each seemed healthy and I guess were on average a week old.

Feeding took a long time (especially when compared to an adult who swallows the vole whole in the blink of an eye) and when the male returned 18 minutes later with another vole she was still ripping up the first one. The male was met with little excitement this time although one of the young tried to grab the vole. Judging by the difference in behaviour I believe the delivery at 18:58 was the first of the evening. A third vole was delivered at 19:37, just 21 minutes after the previous one so the male clearly had no problems finding food!

The video has two food deliveries and lots of feeding of young 😊

one of three ca.week old Great Grey Owl young being fed strips of vole by mum

dad after having delivered the vole. He rested a bit and was probably checking us out

before quickly flying off to hunt again

mum had her wings out almost as protective barriers to keep the young in place

dad has arrived with another vole

Three Great Days

The last three days having been shockingly good!!

All you need is some rain and then the wind to change to southerly and boom.

Fridat started naturally in Maridalen where 19 Temminck’s are yet another record but stubbornly refuse to attract any other calidris to join them. On Thursday though I finally had Greenshank there and 4 Golden Plovers so this springs wader list is very respectable and on Saturday 4 Redshank also dropped in. A short visit to Østensjøvannet gave lots of feeding hirundines in the cold northerly wind which was nice to see after a couple of years where an insect absence has meant there has hardly been any there. House Martins were the scarcest and I am worried about this species. Black-headed Gulls continue to suffer and I could see just 2 nests still occupied. Highlight was a pair of Garganey found by Jack the day before and excitingly their behaviour suggested to me they will try to nest.

After this I announced to anyone who wanted to listen that I was off to Nordre Øyeren to find a Broad-billed Sandpiper and that turned out to be a good prediction😊. I stopped first at Merkja where the american Green-winged Teal is back and a good selection of waders included 18 Temminck’s (still beaten by Maridalen). Svellet again had absolutely no waders but it was Årnestangen where the excitment was. A Bar-headed Goose on the walk out was a tickable piece of category C plastic after the Norwegian records committee has recently «upgraded» it from pure plastic category E.

The real action was to be had at the end though where an initial sweep of the dry mud flats revealed nothing… but a second sweep showed a wader walking around the corner from an unviewable bit of shoreline. Eventually a few others joined and they turned out to be 4 species with a Broad-billed headlining, 11 Sanderling being a very high spring count and 2 each of Dunlin and Ringed Plover being more expected.

But that was only the beginning of the day! In the evening I was guiding to GG Owls. This allowed me to take in a Caspian Tern at Hamar and then the owls completely outdid themselves with the male bringing 3 voles in the course of just an hour which mum fed to three hungry chicks. Happy days!!

So, after such a long day I could be forgiven a little lie in yesterday morning on what had all the hallmarks of being THE day this spring with rain and strong southerly winds forecast. I decided to allow others the joy of walking out to Årnestangen and instead went first to Maridalen where 19 Temminck’s were still present and now even displaying and 3 Greenshank and 4 Redshank were new. I reckoned it was sea gazing that was the best option today and positioned myself at Halden Brygge, Fornebu from 10:30 where a kiosk provides great shelter when it blows from the south. A flock of 30 Oystercatcher heading north as I got out of the car was a promising sign and then a minute later the sight of a flock of 21 Kittiwake was a sure sign that birds were moving. This flock headed north over the city and then a bit later a new flock of 23 came from the south and eventually landed on the water. Red-throated Divers were moving high up with 141 in total and I grilled every tern I saw with all being local Common Terns until suddenly the closest tern of the day turned out to be a Sandwich. This was big - finally after 24 years by far my biggest bogey bird in Norway had fallen😊 and I even got photos. It was heading south and as I watched it a large flock of Brent Geese came into view heading north!! It was all a bit too much. These were pale-bellied birds which usually fly up the west coast of Norway on their way to Svalbard but occasionally take a wrong turn and head up the east coast. They were obviously very confused and eventually turned around and headed south again. After this there were some smaller flocks including one which did head north and I last saw it heading over Maridalen.

Today has been a wet day but I have of course been out. In Maridalen rising water levels and a night with no rain had caused all but 3 of the Temminck’s to move. The fjord didn’t seem to have any interesting birds with the wind having turned easterly and rain making visibility bad. So Nordre Øyeren beckoned. I chose not to walk out to Årnestangen after Svellet only had 8 Temmincks to offer but Merkja had the goods with 2 Mountain Marsh Runners having already been found and feeding alongside Dunlin and Temmincks with the Green-winged Teal also still present and showing well😊

Here are videos and pictures of everything bar the GGO which I will have to come back to.

finally - Sandwich Tern (splitterne)!! and I found it myself :-) 

sea gazing from Halden Brygge

confused Brent Geese (ringgås) over Oslo

here we see they are the Pale-bellied subspecies

I have not counted but reckon they are around 300

Kittiwakes (krykkje)

female Garganey (knekkand) giving unusually good views

male

Caspian Tern (rovterne)

these are probably my best views in Norway much better than the Svellet experience

Bar-headed Goose (stripegås) with Canada Geese and a Canada x Greylag hybrid

a Dunline (myrsnipe) and Broad-billed Sandpiper (fjellmyrløper) - trust me!

Sanderlings (sandløper)

Green-wnged Teal (amerikakrikkand) with normal Teal

quite a collection of birds at Merkja

a male Ruff (brushane) with 4 other wader species

Temminck's Stints 

the Broad-billed Sandpipers at Merkja were much close than at Årnestangen but I still failed to get good photos

2 Mountain Marsh Runners with a Temminck

Dunlin and Temmincks

Green-winged Teal