Golden (Bread) Guiding

Rest, they say, is only for the wicked and this bank holiday has seen me guiding for southern Norway’s best birds which at the moment primarily means owls. I have spent three long, tiring, but very fun, and rewarding days with Graham and Marcus Workman where were have seen Great Grey, Ural and Tegnmalm’s Owls, Black Woodpecker, Wryneck, Honey Buzzard, Common Rosefinch, Icterine and Wood Warblers, Slavonian Grebe, Moose, Capercaille and so much more.

The Great Grey and Ural were rated as their best birding experiences ever and I couldn’t possibly disagree with that.

All the birds that I have been monitoring and checking in on this spring were present and correct and showed impeccably well with my only complaint to the Bird Gods being that the two singing Common Rosefinch that we found were boring brown 2cy males instead of the bright red older males that give them their name. It was only me complaining though☺️

 

I don’t have the time to write any more as I need to allow myself a rest as I am guiding again tomorrow and most of next week. I’ll just let the photos and video do the talking - it truly has been a great weekend!

This explains the Golden Bread reference. When Norwegian birders celebrate a lifer it is a tradition to celebrate with a Gullbrød (gold bread). This chocolate covered bar of marsipan is not to my personal liking but Graham and Marcus were keen to join the tradition. Here they are celebrating GGO which was lifer #1 but there were at least 3 more after that

my footage from the weekend pales into comparison with what these two got. Graham had a top of the range Nikon set up but  Marcus was just using an iphone 11 (the same as me) with an adapter on a Kowa scope and was taking fantastic videos and stills. I hope to link to their work later once they are home and have published it. And I think I will be getting an adapter - will sure be cheaper than buying a new camera and lens that I rather desperately need and to be honest may give better results

Great Grey Owl (lappugle) - this is the "hissig" female and as usual she greeted us by bill snapping and this time growling long before we could see her. Again she was perched in a tree when we arrived but then flew onto the nesting platform so presumably has eggs but once again I can only say that her behaviour is not normal

Ural Owl (slagugle) presumed female. We glimpsed the furry tops of the heads of probably two young in the hole of the nest box and the male was also in the area

it was a joy to see this young Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle) who was looking out at dusk of his own accord (i.e no need for my poor trunk scratching to be put to the test). I reckon it was going to leave the box that same night

This sequence from the Black Woodpecker nests shows first from the nest with the three young where both parents came into feed at the same time but only after we had waited for close to an hour and a half... Our presence clearly affected the behaviour of the parents though and we had to move further back before they came in and fed the young. The sequence in the video where it almost looks like they are engaged in ritual courtship is how they were acting when they did not dare to go the nest (i.e before we moved away). Right at the end is the female in the other nest where excavation seems to be over and hopefully egg laying has begun. As they are a good month later than normal it will be interesting to see if they succesfully fledge young.

male Black Woodpecker (svartspett) and young

Slavonian Grebes (horndykker):

I also had a chance to check the second Ural Owl nest box and here the female was sat high so I reckon has newly hatched young but is around two weeks behind the other pair