Waiting game

The hot sunny weather continues often with northerly winds and cold nighttime temperatures. This sort of weather means no falls or mass arrivals of birds and numbers and variety at Svellet suggests few birds are arriving or leaving at the moment. Some birds do of course arrive though and a trip out to the tip of Årnestangen on Tuesday resulted in me hearing a Citrine Wagtail. Despite my best efforts I could not find the bird but hopefully it will be last years bird returning and will therefore be refound soon holding territory. There are a few Yellow Wagtails back but none are singing yet and the very dry conditions and cold nights are probably not favourable for them or any other insect eating species.

A Great Snipe that flew up from long grass was also a good bird and a nesting pair of Long-tailed Tits are something to marvel over. I encounter a Kingfisher every visit, normally just hearing him or glimpsing him flying away from me up the river. The only time I have seen the bird well it was a male but I do not know whether it is the same bird I see each time. I assume though that there is breeding nearby of a species that has definitely benefited from a series of warmer, shorter winters.

Svellet continues to hold the same species and same numbers every day with the Little Gulls remaining although there is probably quite a turn over of birds. There are still no calidris waders but they will turn up any day soon and then the real fun starts.

In Maridalen one of the Lapwing nests survived the plough which I suppose is good news but it is of course tragic that despite the farmers good intentions that the other nests did not survive the plough.

this Long-tailed Tit (stjertmeis) with a mouth full of insects led to me a nest. I do not think they have young yet but rather it was food for the mate who was incubating

the nest is a remarkable construction

incubating bird. Note how the tail is sticking up through a hole in the nest. This reminds me of one of my earliest ornithological observations and which led to a letter in British Birds (for a teenager this was big!) when I found a nest building LtTits and one of the birds had woven its own tail into the nest construction and was stuck.

taken with the mobile. The nest is large

male Kingfisher (isfugl)

he is often hidden away in bushes away from the water where he calls occasionally but there is no suitable mud banks for a nest site here so I do not understand why he chooses to be there

a stick marking a Lapwing (vipe) nest but the plough went far too close. The pair were hanging out close to their old nest looking a bit forlorn

this nest survived though

a female was in the grass and both her and her mate chased away gulls that came to close. It is possible that they have young (from the first nest I saw) that hatched before the plough. I first noticed a bird sitting on 8 April and with an incubation period of 28 days it is therefore possible that the young have hatched  - hopefully i will see some soon

my first Garden Warbler (hagesanger) of the year

and my first Thrush Nightingale (nattergal)

Black-throated Diver (storlom) with a crayfish in Maridalen.

Osprey (fiskeørn)

this male Smew (lappfiskand) that is in love with a female Goldeneye (kvinand) was on the oxbow lake at the duck hot spot of Stilla. This is surely the same bird that has summered to north east of Oslo since 2019 and was at Østensjøvannet last spring and turns up at different lakes depending on where his chosen Goldeneye choose to go. Here he is in 2020

yet another singing Wryneck (vendehals) in Maridalen

water levels in Svellet continue to be perfect. Let us hope that we have no big rises in water levels but rather slow increases

Svellet north 7 May

Svellet south 7 May