Summer holidays 2025

Summer holidays have begun and per tradition our first week is at a cabin south of Oslo near Hulvik. Butterflies are in short supply so far except for Queen of Spain Fritillaries (sølvkåpe) which are by far the most numerous species and in numbers I have never seen before.

Evening drives with Jr have become another tradition and our first one gave a good haul with 4 Moose including a mother and tiny calf, 3 Roe Deer, 2 Badgers and 3 unidentified small bats. I started with animals as that is Jr’s priority but on the bird front we had 2 Corncrake, 2 Quail, 5 Nightjar, 3 Tawny Owls, 2 Long-eared Owls, 3 Marsh Warblers and quite a few Woodcocks.

The best experience came as we were nearly back at the cabin when we found a pair of Nightjar seemingly nesting. It was as dark as it gets by then but I will spend more time with them and hopefully with the use of the thermal imager get an insight into their secretive lives.

Red-backed Shrikes are scare this year with just 2 males seen one of which was singing so unpaired but the other probably had a female on the nest.

This is the only picture I took of a Nightjar (nattravn) with the superzoom at 00:10. I should probably have taken some more but was concentrating on video

Male Red-backed Shrikes are scare (tornskate)