Completing S Club 6 and owls with ears

This week has seen the final three members of S Cub 6 arriving for duty with Skylark seen on Tuesday and Snow Bunting and Shelduck on Wednesday. I am still to see, or hear, a single member of the band in Maridalen which is still covered in deep snow with no snow free areas yet. There is also lots of snow at Årnestangen and on most fields around the Glomma in Taiga Bean land but a trip to Sweden on Tuesday revealed very little snow from the town of Ski and eastwards. I had hoped that the drive to Sweden would reveal Red Kites but raptors were limited to just a handful of Common Buzzards and a stop at Gjølsjøen revealed my first Lapwings and a pair of Taiga Beans alongside many Skylarks.

A trip to Taiga Bean land yesterday revealed lots of snowy fields and ice on the river and nothing at all at any of the regular fields that I visited. However on a stretch of the river north of Årnes there was a flock of 12. They flew briefly on to a green field by the river where there were also some Greylags and I have noted previously when they arrive to very wintery conditions that they seek out fields with autumn sown green crops rather than trying their luck on stubble fields. With no working GPS collars I have no idea if the rest of the flock has arrived but expect they have not as it is still too wintery.

The two female Stonechats are continuing to hang around at Fornebu and I saw them capturing large hairy caterpillarsso life seems good for them. A number of new birds have also been found so I hope Maridalen will join the party next week.

 

Highlights of the week, and perhaps unsurprisingly for the time of the year, have been owls but not along Owl Road where visits by others has revealed no increase in singing Tengmalm’s and if anything fewer birds with just two birds seeming to be the expected result.

Eagle Owl is a species I have only seen or heard four times before. Twice in 2013 and again 2014 I visited a nest site in Hedmark and saw, heard and filmed singing birds just after sunset and was happy with these encounters. I am not sure as to the current status of this site but believe birds are still there but a couple of hours drive has for some reason put me off trying for them again. I do know of a closer site which is the only regular known site in Oslo and Akershus and visited in 2016. You cannot get close to the birds here and I only heard one singing distantly – enough for my Akershus list but not the type of experience that has had me particularly excited about repeating. Yesterday though I took Jack to listen for it and we didn’t just hear it but actually saw it!! And now I suddenly want more of them. It sang from when we arrived at sunset and despite searching and searching with the telescope it took another half an hour to see it sitting and singing atop a pine tree. Even though it was now getting quite dark I even managed a photo of sorts. But what a bird and I think they are very few others who have actually seen these birds. It was all at quite some range – over 1km – but very enjoyable. When we first heard the song we were very unsure as to whether it was an Eagle Owl as it sounded most like a Wood Pigeon and was not how I remember the song and indeed Merlin also detected it and identified it as a Wood Pigeon…. That ID was clearly wrong as for starters you wouldn’t hear a WP at such long range but I must admit finally seeing it was quite a relief. The bird had been clearly moving from song post to song post as we would hear it from slightly different places but having now a bit more knowledge of where it is I have hope that a future visit on a wind free, sunny evening could result in much better scope views.

Seeing it perched in the scope with its big ears sticking up you realise what a huge bird it is and in reality it should never be confusable with a Long-eared Owl but with grainy photos the two can sometimes be hard to separate. Two encounters with Long-eareds this week though have not had me wondering what they are. I have spotted them flying in the thermal at an expected site but there has been no singing. There are two explanations for this – either they have already formed a pair and laid eggs or they have not got into breeding modus yet. There was still lots of snow on the fields and I am very sure that they are not yet breeding. The overwintering birds that I followed in 2023 were present at their roost until the end of February without their being any song from them. I have previously found a young (non fledged) bird out of the nest in mid May which would mean egg laying at the end of March but this is very early and you normally encounter young out of the nest in June. I did have a singing bird on 6^th March last year but there was far less snow then so conditions were different.

We have exciting times ahead of us!

Eagle Owl! (hubro) at over 1km range and 40 minutes after sunset. If this photo leaves you wondering what you are looking at then the head is to the right, the tail sticking up on the left and the wings are drooped.

And a couple of videos taken with the thermal of Long-eared Owls flying around. They fly on very elastic wings and seem to float at times but can also perform quick changes in direction and stoop down at each other. Wing clapping was heard but I am not sure it this can be seen in the videos.

the female Stonechat (svartstrupe) still at Storøykilen

Taiga Bean Geese on the Glomma

and a pair at Gjølsjen

all 12 on the Glomma

Owls

I was recently challenged on Facebook to post a bird picture a day over the course of a week. I accepted the challenge and decided to post a different species of owl from Norway each day. For those of you who've not seen them on FB, here are the pictures. All the pictures are already on the blog but with some I've improved the original picture, for example I've lightened up the shadows on the Ural Owl.
And as a bonus there are also three owl species that didn't make the final FB cut.

Great Grey Owl (lappugle)

Ural Owl (slagugle)

Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle)

 

Long-eared Owl (hornugle)

Tawny Owl (kattugle)

Hawk Owl (haukugle)

Pygmy Owl (spurveugle)

So I managed pictures of seven species of owl taken in Norway and there are still three species that I have not shown. Here are the three remaining species but my pictures are not so good.

Snowy Owl (snøugle)

Eagle Owl (hubro)

Short-eared Owl (jorduge) together with a Marsh Harrier (sivhauk)

Bean owling

I'm quite happy with yesterday even though things didn’t turn out completely as planned. There were two goals for the day: help understand more about the Bean Geese and find some owls!

The latest GPS data I received on the geese yesterday showed that they were again using Flakstadmåsen, the peat bog that they favoured last autumn. Per Christian and I got there just after lunch (after having found a couple of early Woodlarks (trelerke) back at the stake out and a Great Grey Shrike (varsler) nearby) and immediately had 6 Beans flying in from the NE. They lost height and circled a couple of times but then headed off East. I took this to mean there were no other geese on the deck but five minutes later we found a very well hidden group of 18 Bean and one Pink-footed. Amongst them was "7P" who I had photographed on Monday. These geese were sleeping/resting rather than feeding which might suggest this site is being used this spring as an alternative loafing site since the sandbank on the river is under water. At the field at Neskollen we had just two Beans and none at all on the fields at Horgen or on the river. So where are the other geese? Either on some of the small "hidden" fields they have taken to using or have they moved on? As usual I await for the next set of GPS data to answer dome of the questions (and raise a whole load of new ones).

The peat bog at Flakstadmåsen which is in danger of being dug up. The geese are just visible in the middle

The geese. "7P" is in the middle

We headed on towards Hedmark (home of the big owls). Along the way we encountered over 500 Whooper Swans (sangsvane) but disappointingly no Bewick’s and no geese other than Canadas.

We arrived at our Eagle Owl (hubro) site at 1730 which was an hour earlier than I expected the owls to perform. As I got my dinner out PC walked 100m from the car before running back all smiling and asking if I had seen it? He had seen it in flight along a nearby ridge. Immediately it started singing whilst nearby ridges were still bathed in sunlight!! I then saw it in flight as it moved a short distance but we couldn't relocate it and it then was silent before starting singing again at 1800. PC then picked it up as a distant silhouette in a tree top where it stayed and sang until we left 30 minutes later. The views weren’t great but it was fantastic to hear this, the largest of the owls again.

Eagle Owl!

in flight

We then headed off into the deep Hedmark forests close to the Swedish border hoping for lots of owls of all sizes! Hearing Tengmalm’s (perleugle) on our first stop was very encouraging but things fizzled out after that. We didn’t hear Ural (slagugle) at either of two known breeding sites from last year, and apart from just one more Tengmalm’s had no other owls at all which was quite a disappointment especially knowing we had a three hour drive back to Oslo. A Long-eared Owl (hornugle) flying over the road as we neared Oslo was a slight reward for our efforts.

The days oddest sight. This moose had fallen through the ice. The locals were trying to work out how to get it out

Here we see how it has stuggled through the ice before eventually coming to a halt - it was presumably scared or would have turned round?

Who's a lucky boy?

13 hours birding yesterday (or at least 13 hours out of the house) is a sign that the days are getting longer if nothing else. There were some real quality birds today but there was not quantity.

The tip top quality has to come first meaning that I will write this in reverse chronological order. I found myself somewhere in Hedmark just before sunset hoping to get to properly see Eagle Owl (hubro) this time. I arrived at 1915 thinking I had good time as the sun was still shining on the nearby hill top although. I started eating my dinner when I heard the owl at 1920. At this time the light was still good and Yellowhammers (gulspurv) were still singing but even though the bird was less than 200m away I just couldn’t locate it. It sang nearly continually until 1955. I then saw it flying up into the trees 2005 (I suspect it may have paid a visit to its mate on the nest) and it then started singing again at 2010. I then saw it in flight (whilst still singing) at 2017 and I had it in full view (although very poor light) until I left at 2035.

Eagle Owl taken at 2019 at a range of 150

Here is some half decent video (given the poor light) and finally you can see the bird and hear it using normal loudspeakers!

look at those ears

in habitat

This site is really quite remarkable. The owl sings close to a small road and whilst I was there there was also shooting going on nearby which didn’t seem to bother the owl in any way. Given the owl sang from the same small area for the whole time I think it is safe to assume that the nest site is very close by. These birds are clearly not too worried about being close to humans!

Prior to this I had spent the day in eastern Akershus with a small trip over the border into Østfold. My trip took in Hellesjøvannet, Hemnesjøvannet, Kallaksjøen, Hærsetsjøen, Bjørkelangen, Kjelle, Haugrim, Glomma by Udenes and Nes Kirke Ruinene.

A summary of what I saw:

Skylarks are back in force, Greylags (grågås) are building up in numbers along with the odd Canada Goose (kanadagås) and Whooper Swan (sangsvane), the first Cranes (trane) are back, a few Buzzards (musvåk) are to be seen, a few Reed Buntings (sivspurv) and Chaffinches (bokfink) are singing and a couple of Starlings (stær) were in fields. But that is really it, except for Udenes.

Udenes is the Scottish Bean Goose (sædgås) resting site. The first birds have been back a few days but today I was able to count 62 birds including three neck ringed birds. I could only read the rings on two and they were 4Z and 6S who I had also seen here on 20 March last year. None of the satellite tagged birds are here yet although one did fly here from Denmark on 28 March only to promptly return to Denmark! Conditions are by no means good for the birds here with the fields still snow covered. All the birds I saw were on the river. 15 were feeding along the edge in pairs or family groups, 33 were resting on the sand bank and a flock of 14 flew in from the north and joined the resting birds. The flock of 14 may have been a newly arrived flock or more likely given they came from the north were coming in from some fields where they had been attempting to feed. It is very interesting that these fabalis Bean Geese are so loyal to this site which attracts very few other geese (today just 2 Canada Geese) whilst site further south had good numbers of Greylag Geese but no Bean.

Also here 21 Whooper Swans, a singing Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (dvergspett) and a Lapwing (vipe).

part of the flock of Bean Geese

Owling

Last night was going to be the big owl night in Hedmark with Bjørn Olav. The evening started with Eagle Owl (hubro). We heard it singing first whilst it was still fairly light at around 1840 but thought the sound was coming from many hundreds of metres away. I walked closer to it and realised the bird was closer than we thought and it was just the lay of the land that made it sound so far away. However I it was deep in the forest and it then stopped singing. I walked back to the others who were ready to leave and we got in the car. We stopped where I thought we would be closest to the bird and as we got out of the car it flew out of an isolated tree only 100m away from us. The light was poor now but if only we had known it was there.... It did not fly far though and then started singing only 200 metres from us although not visible. It was also joined in song by the female and I saw it briefly one more time in flight. A great experience with the bird both seen (although poorly) and heard. The song was surprisingly weak and carried a lot less far than the Tengmalm’s Owls (perleugle) I have heard recently although according to the literature the song can carry upto 4km.

We then headed north close to the Swedish border. This was my third visit to this area where Ural Owls definitely occur but yet again we drew a blank. Listening conditions were perfect with hardly a breath of wind. It was bright with a cloudless night, a near full moon and temperatures down to -17C. The later may not have helped but Tengmalm’s Owls were in good voice although not as numerous as they were in 2011. We had 7 different birds singing over a stretch of 15 km. we also had a single Pygmy Owl (spurveugle) which was singing strongly at both 2230 and midnight which is unusual for this species which usually sings at dusk.

Due to the cold the night didn’t at all times feel like a success especially as the Ural Owls didn’t reveal themselves but 1 Eagle Owl, 7 Tengmalm’s and a single Pygmy Owl must go down as a good nights owling!! We also saw the northern lights although they were weak. I have a picture of them plus some video of some tree tops where you with a good bass on your loud speakers you can hear the low pitched call of an Eagle Owl. In addition to good speakers you will also need some good will to hear the owl above all the other background noise.

northern lights over the forest of Hedmark

young Moose