Day 4 was weather wise pretty much perfect for being in the field and far better than the forecast. Often there was no wind at all and you could hear the noise of a warbler’s bill snapping at an insect. There were only a few indications of new arrivals and it was not a big day by any stretch of the imagination but it was a good day to be out and about and 16,000 steps were pounded.
Experience of the day was a pod of Killer Whales powering through the sea off the north of the island early morning.
Bird of the day was a Common Rosefinch (only my third on Værøy and a species that is close to but not annual out here).
Learning of the day was that I cannot tell Olive-backed and Tree Pipits apart on call. These two species were traditionally considered inseparable on call but in the last 10-20 years it has been accepted that with experience you can tell apart. Based on my experiences and observations on Værøy I also thought I could but today that confidence came crashing down. I heard a pipit calling in flight and immediately identified it as an OBP. I had my phone ready to play the call and straightaway the pipit appeared above me calling and the call was as far as I was concerned the same as I was playing. It landed on the fish drying racks just a few metres away and I immediately set about taking pictures. Head on it did indeed look like an OBP with a black spot on the cheek but as it turned sideways on to me I thought the wing bars looked far too white and I wasn’t seeing any green tones. Then when it turned away and I saw the well streaked back I realised without doubt it was a Tree Pipit. This whole experience made me immediately realise my OBP record from yesterday had to be pulled and also had me wondering how I could have got it so wrong.
OBP in late autumn outnumbers TP on Værøy by around 10 to 1 and therefore identifying a bird as OBP based on call and then confirming it by seeing it is statistically very likely to happen. Had I (we) just been playing the numbers? I don’t know the answer to that but a Tree Pipit in October is rarer than an Olive-backed so I should perhaps be happy with my observation.
Other quality birds were a single YbW, Jack Snipe, Bullfinch, a tristis Chiffchaff, proper Barnacles Geese from Svalbard (rather than the feral birds around Oslo) and a Short-eared Owl and quantity was provided with hundreds of Redwings and Redpolls.
The view at 0715 - it all looked very promising
Sunrise at 07:29
Migrating Barnacle Geese (hvitkinngås)
Looking north at 08:08 with the island of Mosken and behind it the Lofoten island chain
Killer Whale
Not an Olive-backed (sibirpip) but a Tree Pipit (trepiplerke)
Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin)
Common Rosefinch (rosenfink)
The wood (skogen) suffered in a storm a few years ago and all the trees in the middle have now disappeared leaving just a ring of trees. The Rosefinch was in the too of the tall Rowans to the right
Very Grosbeak like
A Common Snipe (enkeltbekkasin) doing an impression of a Jack by freezing at close range
We have had another long weekend and with good weather forecast
on Saturday I decided to head to the mountains on Friday evening. Normally I
would have had a boyz weekend in the mountains around this time but
circumstances have conspired to mean that wouldn’t happen this year so I rather
spur of the moment packed a sleeping bag in the car and headed off on my own.
In the end I was out for 27 hours and had 2 hours of sleep, 30 minutes of which
was a rather necessary power nap on the way home…
I surprised myself with how much energy I had although on
the way home I was counting down the kilometres.
After 3 and a half hours driving I started the birding at my
Great Snipe lek. After a blank last year I was hoping that was just a bit of
bad luck but there were no birds again this year and I now reckon the lek has
been abandoned. Why is more difficult to answer. It is close to a path and a
ski lift but has always been so and I cannot see any changes in the immediate
area that would affect the birds. The Beitostølen area has seen lots and lots
of building of cabins but the lek is above the cabins, perhaps though the nesting
females have always used areas that are now being developed and the general
area is no longer attractive for them. Alternatively the species itself is
suffering a significant decline due to factors in winter and passage areas and
this has causes some leks to disappear as the birds concentrate in core areas.
These are my maximum counts at the lek since I discovered it in 2012 and the
downward trend is obvious:
the (former) lek site
There were very few birds around the lek otherwise and the
vegetation was still very brown. There was little snow and only lakes above
1300m had ice but I think this is from a warm period 2-3 weeks ago but since
then it has been cold and windy so vegetation has not yet started developing.
I drove a long stretch of road during the night with
frequent stops hoping to find Great Snipe other places but did not succeed.
There was a lot of other life though. Between midnight and 1am I was surprised
by how much activity there was from other waders and grouse and also a Short-eared
Owl that perched in my headlights.
I had my hour and half sleep in the car and awoke at 3:30am to
lots of noise. All manner of birds were singing and displaying and over the
next 6 hours I feasted my eyes on Dotterels, Temminck’s Stints, Shore Larks,
Lapland and Snow Buntings, Bluethroats, Long-tailed Ducks, Scaup, Common and
Velvet Scoters and more. It is clearly not a rodent year in this area and
aswell as no Long-tailed Skuas I just had a single Rough-legged Buzzard,
another Short-eared Owl, 2 Kestrels, a Golden Eagle and a White-tailed Eagle.
After this as the sun warmed things up I concentrated on
butterfliesand I took a slight detour
to visit a site of the rare Large Grizzled Skipped (alvesmyger). I did at the
time think I had found them but my pictures show I saw, or at least the ones I
managed to photograph, were ordinary Grizzled Skippers which I didn’t realise occurred
there. Their large cousins do fly later and the end of June is the time most people
see them so I will have to try again later… I did have another good species but
none were new for me so I am a bit disappointed but will I hope have a
butterfly post soon.
Dotterel (boltit)
it was only displaying females that I saw but they were very active
Golden Eagle (kongeørn) and a mountain
I heard quite a few (although not lots of) Bluethroats (blåstrupe) but saw none at close range
I only had Lapland Buntings (lappspurv) at one site but 5! males were singing and song flighting within 100m of each other
a Ptarmigan (fjellrype) at 11pm
male Shore Lark (fjellerke)
and his mate
one of the two Short-eared Owls (jordugle) I saw
Snow Buntings (snøspurv) were unusually numerous this year
male
female
03:39 at my hotel
my now favoured raptor watch point was a bit disappointing this year with just 4 birds of 4 species: Golden Eagle, White-tailed Eagle, Rough-legged Buzzard and Kestrel
Today was the day we had all been looking forward to. The strong winds were forecast to stop and we had optimistically interpreted that the weather systems would bring us birds from far further east.
Leaving the house at dawn there was indeed no wind (it was completely still) and there were a lot of birds in the air: thrushes, finches and pipits. It was great to experience but were there any scarce or rare birds among them?.As time wore on it became increasingly clear the answer was no. We found no new warblers and there were very few birds on the deck.
A very high flying Short-eared Owl was good enough but after that I had to make do with Jack Snipe hunting and of 11 birds I found 3 were of birds on the deck and of course I rather over did the photo taking😊
We all started getting a bit despondent and ended up going back to the area around our house. Luckily Kjell saved the day for everyone with a Richard’s Pipit. This is a species that has p become rare in Norway and this was only the second in the country this year. It was also the most cooperative bird of the species i have ever seen and I managed my first ever non flight photos. It was not particularly large and we used some time to convince ourselves it wasn’t a Blyths but once it called we were happy with it being a Dick’s.
Richard’s Pipit (tartarpiplerke)
Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin)
Can you find it?
A late Whinchat (buskskvett)
Otter
Sanderling (sandløper)
Birding at 7am
Dunlin (myrsnipe)
Barnacle Geese (hvitkinngås)
young Long-tailed Duck (havelle)
Short-eared Owl (jordugle)
I thought the Otter was going for the duck but the duck wasn’t concerned
