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
I wrote in my last post that to see new butterflies in Norway I would have to make specific trips well that proved, and very quickly, to be wrong😊. Yesterday Mrs OB, the Beast and I (no chance of getting Jr and Jr Jr to accompany us) climbed a mountain. The missus chose where we went and it was in the mountains close to the Swedish border 61km east of the cabin where we would get to see the Blåmannsis glacier close up (we see it on the horizon from the cabin). I had hopes that we would see butterflies especially as it was sunny after a week of rain but I had no specific info on the area and anything I were to find would definitely go into the «stumbled upon» box.
I got a really good feeling when we got out of the car. We were at 650m alltitude (the tree line was about 500m and we were heading for a peak that was 1010m. We would be walking up a southern facing slope and there were flowers everywhere! Just by the car I found a new species of orchid in the form of 5 Coralroot (korslrot), a rather anonymous and small orchid, but an orchid none-the-less.
Butterflies however were not abundant. Dewy Ringlets (fjellringvinge) were the only butterfly I saw initially but then I saw some white butterflies and now it got interesting. Up here there is the chance of northern clouded yellow (mjeltgulvinge) and pale arctic clouded yellow (polargulvinge) but all the butterflies that stopped and allowed study were green-veined whites (rapssommerfugl) which as far as I am concerned shouldn’t be in such alpine habitat.
As we climbed higher we kept coming across more and more flowers and there were bumblebees and the odd moth but no new butterflies. Birds were also in very short supply but a Ptarmigan and a Snow Bunting felt like perfect species to encounter. After reaching the top we took a slightly different path back and passed a fantastic flower covered hillside at 900m. A butterfly flew up from the side of the track and thankfully landed close by. An alpine grizzled skipper (polarsmyger)!! Finally one of the special species I had been hoping for. I scanned and scanned the mountainside but only noticed a couple of Dewy Ringlets. I then rejoined my patient family and one last scan revealed a fast flying white butterfly which surely couldn’t be another g-v white. I literally ran after it and saw it landed at about 50m range. I fired off some shots including when it quickly flew off. Crap pictures but enough to show that as I had hoped it was a pale arctic clouded yellow!!! It couldn’t really get much better - 2 rarely recorded species stumbled upon. Next year I will try to give this area a proper grilling but on past form that will mean seeing nothing new😉
Alpine grizzled skipper (polarsmyger)
Pale arctic clouded yellow (polarsmyger)
It did land at 50m range but the pictures were useless
The flower covered mountainside at 900m
The blåmannsis glacier
Close up of the glacier - the white is ice not cloud
The glacier at 60km range
Ptarmigan (fjellrype)
Coral root (koralrot)
Dewy ringlet (fjellringvinge) - the commonest butterfly
In the area around the cabin there has apparently been
a ban on grouse shooting for few years but that is to be lifted as the population
is healthy and the fact that males were displaying from the roofs of cabins
definitely seemed to support this. We had many encounter with Willow Grouse with
males showing well and females generally just seen running away.
We had (Rock) Ptarmigan just on Valdresflye which is
400m higher up than the cabin and a pair showed well but surprisingly we had a
pair of Willow Grouse in the same area but higher up so one can not just use
habitat or altitude to separate these species.
male Willow Grouse (lirype) on the roof of the neighbouring cabin early in the morning
a female
note how in this picture she also has a lot of red above the eye which was not visible in the previous picture
this one was higher up the mountain than the Ptarmigan in the next pictures
female Ptarmigan (fjellrype) with skies behind
male with just a bit of red above the eye and the black lores that separate it in white winter plumage from Willow Grouse
