No owls

There have been no sightings of Great Grey Owls since Thursday (despite lots of people looking) which goes a long way to confirming they were - unfortunately - just passing through. Sightings of Pine Grosbeaks have also dried up but there are still lots of berries in urban areas so I remain hopeful that we will have a few more sightings as the winter progresses.

I have had long forest walks on both Saturday and today and these have revealed very few birds but there has been some quality with three sightings of Capercaille,  three of Hazel Grouse and one of Three-toed Woodpecker. Capercaille is a hard to come by species in Oslo but the area where I have seen them does seem to be perhaps the most reliable, in late autumn at least, and accessible area there is. Today I had a male just walking along the path as I came around a corner. Amazingly enough he did not take flight or get initially spotted by the Beast who was on a lead. I was able to raise my camera (still the superzoom) start filming and zooming in before the dog finally noticed the big black bird and jumped towards it. This caused the lead to jerk me off balance and the camera to start filming something else and the bird to fly up into trees. But I did get this footage:

This video has the sound of two different male Hazel Grouse (jerpe). The song of each male is subtly unique and I have heard one of these before about 700m away.

this is definitely a Hazel Grouse dropping

and this probably also is but a much fresher one

whereas I am quite sure this is from a Pine Marten (mår)

the Great Grey Shrike (varlser) was again on show in Maridalen on Tuesday, here with the Linderudkollen skijump in the background

this Mute Swan (knoppsvane) family on a park in Oslo are interesting. Of the 4 young two are normal and two are "Polish". The "Polish" ones are the two left hand birds that looks like adults with white plumage and nearly orange bills. This is a colour deformation that I assume was first noticed in Poland where the young birds are white instead of the usual browny grey. They also have pinky legs which if I remember correctly they keep as adults

earlier in the week large flocks of Fieldfares (gråtrost) were still finding food on grassy fields in Maridalen but it was a lot colder today with no sun and I only found a single Fieldfare in the whole valley

a visiting Whooper Swan (sangsvane) family in Maridalen

A visit to Østensjøvannet was made with the hope that recent cold weather further north would have pushed some ducks out of the mountains and they would be having a short stop over on the lake. There was none of that going on but a Water Rail (vannriske) was making a lot of noise and a Heron was looking for fish: