2025 The Birding Year That Was part 1

2025 hasn’t felt like a particularly exciting year and I can easily list off the fairly common species I haven’t seen such as Fulmar (how is that even possible?!?), Yellow-browed or Grasshopper Warbler, any white winged gulls, Great Northern or White-billed Divers. However, I have clearly had a fairly good year because my total of 245 species in Norway is slightly better than my average for the last 15 years.

I didn’t engage in much twitching but finding my own Long-billed Dowitcher and Sandwich Tern were new species for me in Norway and twitches (I would prefer to call them detours) resulted in two new gulls – Ring-billed and Yellow-legged. Other good finds were a Turtle Dove and a Red Kite.

I was less confined to Oslo this year and 180 species versus last years record 205 illustrates that perfectly. Akershus was visited more though and 211 species was my first tally over 200 since 2019 and my third best tally ever following 216 in 2018 and 212 in 2017.

I had trips to Hedmark and Oppland and saw the usual forest and mountain species and we stayed at the cabin in Bodø for the first time in a while and while that disappointed on the bird front it did deliver on the butterfly front big time.

An autumn without a visit to Værøy, Røst or Jæren was slightly salvaged with only my second ever visit to Lista.

 

January

2025 started with a few Pine Grosbeaks hanging on from the invasion the previous autumn but my last sighting was on Jan 17 - it is rather amazing how they just seem to vanish. The Hawk Owl in Maridalen hung on until the end of March though and could always brighten up a dull day.

Very good (unprecedented) numbers of sea ducks on the fjord were exploiting an abundant hatch of baby mussels and a few Scaup amongst them were nice. 

Pine Grosbeak (konglebit) at Grefsenkollen

Hawk Owl (haukugle) in Maridalen

Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) at Fornebu

Scaup (bergand) on the fjord with a single Tufted Duck (toppand)

February

The most obvious species in February was probably Common Crossbill as this species which had arrived in Oslo’s forests in the previous autumn was no starting to breed as the numerous cones were clearly at just the right stage to be suitable for feeding young. Females were nest making whilst the mates looked on and kept guard and flocks of mostly males visited the roads to lick salt.

Listening to singing owls on cloudless, windless and very cold nights is always a highlight of late winter/early spring but it is not every year the owls even bother singing as they will only turn their thoughts to breeding if there are enough rodents. 2025 thankfully was such a year and a number of visits to Owl Road revealed singing Great Grey, Tawny and Tengmalm’s Owls.

By the end of the month a number of spring migrants had already returned and for the second year running White-fronted Geese chose to stop off at Bygdøy giving exceptional views. The Taiga Beans were also back before the month end registering their second earliest arrival.

a female Crossbill (grankorsnebb) collecting nesting material in Maridalen

and male Crossbills searching for salts on the edge of a road

my first of a number of encounters with Tengmalm's Owl (perleugle), this one on Owl Road

and my first encounter of the year Great Grey Owl (lappugle) also on Owl Road

The Taiga Bean Goose pair V8 and 05 (with the GPS sender). The GPS plots of 05 indicated they bred in Sweden before transmissons abruptly ceased and come the autumn V8 (the male) had three young in tow but 05 was no more

Snow Bunting (snøspurv) in Maridalen - always one of the first and most anticipated spring migrants

a pair of White-fronted Geese (tundragås) with a Greylag at Bygdøy.

March

Woodcock and Lapwing arrived very early to Maridalen and owling trips early in the month added singing Long-eared to the list.

A Stonechat was now an expected early spring find of a species in growth but many sighting of possibly up to three different Bewick’s Swans was a welcome sight of a species in decline in Western Europe and now seen so infrequently in Norway it could be considered a national rarity.

Visits to Owl Road were rewarded with varying levels of success suggesting perhaps a light crash in rodent numbers but we did still hear the odd Tengmalm’s  and had another encounter with a singing GG.

This year’s big movement of Pink-footed Geese occurred on the 20th and I counted over 9000 birds in around 3 hours over Maridalen. Only a couple of decades ago the big day would have been a month later. Crossbill chicks had left the nest by the months end and quite quickly the species was moving off looking for the next area with fresh cones.

The Maridalen Hawk Owl gave some of its best views right before it left when it still seemed to find a good supply of voles and even raised the hope that we could have local breeding (not that we ever saw more than the one bird and there was no singing).

another Tengmalm's encounter

Hawkie and lunch

a GG

Bewick's Swan (dvergsvane) with Whoopers (sangsvane)

and here videos of 4 species of owl singing during the month plus a fifth havng a snack

April

Owls continued to be a theme with a Tengmalm’s nest finally found and a pair visiting it at night but subsequent daytime visits never revealed the nest to be occupied although there is mounting evidence that this has more to do with my poor tree scratching skills than lack of birds. Northern Lights also spiced up owling nights.

A trip to Per Christian’s cabin at the start of the month revealed yet another Tengmalm’s plus a Hawk Owl but no Eagle Owls which we had really hoped to discover. A stop at the marvellous floods at Starene revealed a ton of geese and a White-tailed Eagle hunting them.

The first rarity of the year was a Ring-necked Duck at Nordre Øyeren which had to be twitched as it was an Akershus tick although I have already had one in Oslo.

An Easter visit to Hedmark resulted in finding a Great Grey Owl nest in an old raptors nest which would then become the focus of a number of guiding visits over the next couple of months.

A booming Bittern at Hellesjøvannet had to be heard and for the first time I also saw (glimpsed) the species in Norway. That means that I have now finally seen every species on my modest Norwegian list.

The Long-eared Owls that I had heard singing in March revealed themselves in April and I found two surprisingly low down and visible nests that provided many an interesting encounter in April and May.

A daughter keen to practice her driving and also to go shopping in Sweden (cross border shopping both entails saving lots of money, finding products you can’t buy in Norway and of course buying things that you really could do fine without) gave a very memorable meeting with Red Kites on the Norwegian side of the border where the species seems to be firmly established now and we saw 4 birds.

A Green-winged Teal also had to twitched at Merkja and this presumably returning bird became a long stayer.

Right at the end of the month another twitch gave ridiculously good views of a 1st summer female Red-footed Falcon that had found the supply of worms on a golf course too good to say no to.

Tengmalm's in an old woodpecker hole

northern lights the same night

a sub ad White-tailed Eagle (havørn) with a Pink-footed Goose (kortnebbgås) that it then dropped (and the goose flew off) at Starene

Ring-necked Duck (ringand) with a Tufted

incubating Great Grey Owl (lappugle)

roadside female Capercaille (storfugl) on the same trip

Red Kite (rødglente)

Red-footed Falcon (aftenfalk)

May

May is always the most exciting month of the year around Oslo. May 2025 didn’t feel that great and Svellet was a shadow of its once might self but one good day at Årnestangen and another at Fornebu gave me two new, and self-found, Norwegian ticks so the statistics show it was a good month!

The absolute highlight was initially a frustrating experience when on the 9^th I found a brick red wader sleeping with a small group of Ruff distantly at Årnestangen. It took me an hour to be confident that it was a Dowitcher and then even more time before it called allowing me to call it as a Long-billed (the default of the two species in Norway). Being a new species for Oslo and Akershus it was of course a popular bird with a number of people making the 3km walk before it then flew off but was later refound at Svellet which also allowed Svellet to regain some pride after having disappointed until then.

Frequent trips to Hedmark to see the GG Owls also revealed a singing (and probably another individual) Ortolan. This species has been in a long term decline towards what seems an unavoidable disappearance as a breeding bird in Norway but it still seems mighty odd that the Government announced in December that the species is “extinct” in Norway. With the successful breeding that I discovered in 2023 (and which had been missed by those paid to monitor the species), 2 singing males in 2024 and 2 singing males in 2025 (plus others and not just me suspecting that one of the males had a companion) then it strikes me as being totally wrong to use the word «extinct» and actually shows a complete ignorance of the correct terminology among those who make decisions (but no nature interested person in Norway would be surprised by that). I am not trying to make light of the plight of Ortolan (and pretty much every other migrant species) but a species that still returns to sing and hold territory and which only two years ago was proved to breed cannot be described as extinct.

If Svellet was struggling to attract waders then surely none could be expected at Maridalsvannet but in the second half of the month the water levels fell enough that it became a magnet for the late returning  Temminck’s Stints with a huge count of 19 birds and with small number of other species I actually saw more individual waders at Maridalsvannet than at either Svellet or Årnestangen!

24^th May was a monster day at Fornebu with fjord gazing giving me Sandwich Tern (tick), loads of Red-throated Divers, Kittiwakes and hundreds of Pale-bellied Brent Geese.

I had a visit to the mountains at the end of the month with displaying Red-necked Phalaropes and Broad-billed Sandpipers as my reward but not a singe raptor or owl spoke for the rodent situation.

Oslo & Akershus's first ever Long-billed Dowitcher (langnebbbekkasinsnipe)

One of remnants of Norway's breeding population of Ortolan Buntings

my first ever Norwegian Sandwich Tern (splitterne) was the highlight of a good day on the fjord at Fornebu

Great Grey Owl feeding time

female Red-necked Phalarope (svømmesnipe) in the mountains right at the end of the month

a pair of Garganey (knekkand) that turned up at Østensjøvannet looked like they would nest but vanished as abruptly as they appeared

one of the adults from the two pairs of Long-eared Owls (hornugle) I had been following since April

and one of the broods

June

The beginning of the month saw quite an arrival of Terns at Maridalsvannet with both Common and Arctic exploiting an abundant hatch of aquatic flying insects. Upto 8 Arctic and 4 Common is a new high but the last few years have seen more and more June records of Terns here. And Svellet kind of redeemed itself with a pair of Little Terns.

June is not complete without a visit to Beitostølen and Valdresflya. Worryingly my Great Snipe lek was quiet for the second year running but other species such as Dotterel were on fine fettle.

Breeding Hobbies and Honey Buzzards received attention that would only increase as the summer wore on.

The start of the summer holidays at Hulvik resulted in my second Sandwich Tern of the year (and ever in Norway) plus a self-found Caspian both seen from the patio whilst drinking coffee and nighttime outings revealed good numbers of Nightjars which is species definitely on the increase in Norway.

On the owl front I had a couple more visits to the Great Greys and could see the young out of the nest and in Maridalen a Tawny Owl family was great value.

a distinctive 3cy Arctic Tern (rødnebbterne) that hung around at Maridalsvannet for a few days

singing Lapland Bunting (lappspurv) in the mountains

female Dotterel (boltit)

young Tawny Owls (kattugle) in Maridalen

and one of the young GGO at my nest site

seawatching in style although the view is rather restricted

but Caspian Tern (rovterne) was not just seen but documented!

A day at the gee gees

In England going to the gee gees means going to the horse races. In the birding world we also have gee gees or GGs aka birds beginning with Great Grey which in Norway means Owl and Shrike.

 

This winter has seen no movements of Great Grey and Hawk Owls into southern Norway with birds seemingly staying in their breeding areas where there are clearly plenty of rodents there and therefore no need to go on a wander to find better feeding areas. From what I understand the rodent situation is so good in GG breeding areas that they are primarily hunting within the forest and at night so even there are not particularly easy to see even if there are (relatively) lots of them.

That one should turn up away from breeding areas and in a relatively small area of woodland is therefore surprising but a drip of pictures on Facebook that then turned into a bubbling brook before morphing into a raging torrent showed that there was a bird in Østfold near Fredrikstad. There was clearly an attempt at secrecy for the birds sake but as my own experiences in Maridalen a few years ago taught me secrecy is not possible as soon as a couple of other people know and especially if the pull of Social Media is too strong to resist (which it wasn’t for me that time).

I had made an attempt to see the bird on Monday when a shopping trip to Sweden with Jr only involved a 10 minute detour to see the bird. A few likely looking older men in camouflage clothing and attempting to hide cameras showed I was in the right spot but an attempt to find out if they had seen the bird was met with answers suggesting they didn’t know what I was talking about until one of them recognised me and realised it would be a bit silly to try to deny the obvious. The bird had been seen earlier but had disappeared and I therefore decided to continue on the shopping trip and try again at dusk on the way home. This did not reveal the bird in rather wet conditions but a check of the weather forecast showed that Wednesday would be a bright, sunny and windless day in another wise dull week so a plan was hatched.

I have made a long given promise that I would show a Maridalen regular a Great Grey Owl if I ever saw one so I asked him if he wanted to join me and unsurprisingly he did not need asking twice. We left Oslo at 0800 with sunrise at 0915 and arrived just after that mysterious and seldom seen golden orb had risen over the horizon. We met another Maridalen regular and after promising to call each other when/if we found the bird went searching for it. After two hours all we had found was a Great Grey Shrike which is a very good bird but not quite as Great as its namesake that we were hoping to see. We kept on searching though and on returning to the road met a togger who told us that even though he hadn’t seen it that it had apparently been seen by others flying in “that direction” (he pointed). So we continued walking in that direction and after adding a few more thousand steps to our tally we saw some green clad men (and a woman) pointing big lenses at something and there it was. The Maridalen regular was there too but hadn’t been kind enough to send us the message he had unprompted earlier promised to send. Apparantly he “hadn’t been allowed”…. I do not know who was policing the viewing but the steady stream of other toggers that were turning up showed that there were clearly different rules for different people.

We were able to view the bird well but it was quite distant and no one tried to get any closer - it was quite refreshing to see such self control. The bird was cleary just enjoying the sun and preening every now and again before it dived down at something and was then mostly hidden from us but was clearly in hunt mode.

So a double Gee Gee day - what a great way to finish the birding year!

Gee

Gees

Great Grey Owl (lappugle)

here obscured by branches as it hunts low down

Great Grey Shrike (varsler)

The fjord has birds!

My frustration at the lack of birds has been rather obvious of late but I had forgot about the fjord off Fornebu which last winter held exceptional numbers of seaduck due, apparently, to a vast hatch of young mussels which they fed on.

On Thursday after an uneventful walk around Fornebu we then checked out the sea and whilst the numbers of Common Eider, Velvet and Common Scoter were back to normal levels (20-30 of each species) we did have 7 Long-tailed Duck which is a very good count here and best of all Elvis, the long staying resident King Eider put in a rare appearance from land.

Also, a part of the fjord, Frognerkilen is an urban location best known for being able to feed the ducks and swans but there is also a small reedbed where I plan that one fine day I will add Bearded Tit to my Oslo list. A Kingfisher has recently been reported from here and after three attempts I also eventually saw it. Chatting to a man with a very long lens though revealed that he had been watching it for a couple of months and has managed to keep it quiet and not post (yet) any pictures on his SO ME so good on him and the bird!

One of my unsuccessful visits was enlivened though with a Jack Snipe which I think has been pushed out the reedbed due to a very high tide and was stood upon some floating reedstems.

The weather forecast shows no return to wintery weather in the foreseeable future and I am sure that Maridalsvannet will not freeze over until January at the earliest. And who knows maybe we are in for such a mild winter that it won’t freeze over at all which will be a first (though I think that I remember one previous winter without ice before January).

Common Eider (ærfugl) and the noticeably smaller King Eider (praktærfugl)

my camera was really playing up but you can glimpse the left half of a Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) here...

... and the right half here

Kingfisher (isfugl)

the Marsh Tits (løvmeis) are still showing well in Maridalen

Gulling - a sure sign of desperation!

It continues to be grey and virtually birdless – surely the least exciting bird winter in Oslo in the nearly 25 years I have lived here.

An appointment down town this morning allowed me to check out what urban birds there might be around the Opera. I failed to find the Peregrines on their normal perch on the Posten building so any excitement was going to be on the gull front which as regular readers know is not a family of birds that I normally find that exciting but rather frustrating. In addition me looking at gulls is a sign of complete desperation!

There was a large gang of mostly 1^st winter Herring Gulls hanging around waiting to be fed. This autumn there has been a lot of social media focus on weak Guillemots on the fjord which has resulted in a campaign to feed them with fish and especially by the Opera where many Guillemots wait offshore to be fed. This source of easy food has of course been discovered by the smart and opportunistic local Herring Gulls and this has now resulted in them being fed on an industrial scale away from the Guillemots so as to allow the Guillemots to feed successfully and in peace. Personally, I am no fan of this artificial feeding as the young gulls are missing out on how to discover their own food (it was quite striking how relatively few adults birds were there) and there is plenty of natural food (starfish) at the moment.

I could find no white wingers or Caspian or even Caspian look-a-likes amongst the lazy gulls but there were two 1cy Herring with very creamy colours of the type that suggests a hybrid with Glaucous Gull. One of these was ringed and proved to have hatched in a nearby colony and with no reports of Glaucous Gulls this, or any previous, summer this (and a number of previously similar and locally bred birds) shows that these are pale colour forms and within the variation of Herring Gulls rather than hybrids.

 

A Lesser Black-backed Gull was perhaps the highlight. Wintering birds in Norway are rare and less than annual in Oslo and are normally young birds. This one had a black back and had previously been suggested to be a fuscus (Baltic Gull) which is also a very rare subspecies in the south of the country. Although the bird had a surprisingly little amount of streaking on the head I could see nothing else to suggest fuscus with there being an obvious contrast between black outer primaries and otherwise dark grey wings. There were a few browner feathers in the wings especially the median primary coverts which I initially took to be a sign of immaturity but the outermost primary (P10) was also brown but was clearly an adult feather due to its large mirror so these browner feathers must be older unmoulted feathers.  The tail was also completely white and the bill had no dark smudges that it has before full adulthood.

a very pale 1cy Herring Gull (gråmåke) that some may suggest is a hybrid with Glaucous Gull (polarmåke). Compare it to normally plumaged bird to its left. This bird was ringed as a nestling in a nearby colony and similar ringed birds in previous years seem to prove that these birds are just within the variation of Herring Gulls

and another similar but unringed bird

and an example of a very dark Herring Gull

the adult Lesser Black-backed Gull (sildemåke) in front of the Munch Museum

note that P10 is old an unmoulted, P9 has just been dropped and a new feather is growing out. The brown medium primary coverts and some secondaries are also unmoulted feathers contrasting with new, moulted, feathers

the wings are much too grey to be fuscus

note that the moult is symmetric in the left and right wings with the new P9 equally long

and a brute of a young Great Black-backed Gull (svartbak)

More Jack Snipe

I found Wednesday’s bird again yesterday in exactly the same spot. After finding it and taking a few pictures I then left it but bumped into another birder and after the traditional pleasantries of “much about?” and my answer of yes “en kvartbekkasin” I offered to show it to him. It was easy to find in the thermal but it took the expected long time for him to actually see it through the bins because their camouflage is just amazing and if you are not sure what you are looking for (most people are surprised at quite how small they are) then you just don’t see them. It had moved a few metres from where I had seen it earlier so I decided to return with my tripod and try to remotely film it feeding (and bobbing) but on my return the thermal could only pick up a couple of still warm droppings showing that it must have walked a few metres into the reedbed and was no longer in view. If it is feeding in the daytime this suggests a hungry bird which again suggests, to me, a newly arrived migrant but again only time will tell (there was no sign of it today).

Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) showing just how perfect its camouflage is. The yellow stripes on its back perfectly math the dead reed stems in the area where it choose to feed and roost

rain drops on its exquisitely plumaged and clearly water resistant feathers

here you can see one of its toes that it seems to be holding frozen in the air and I assume that it had frozen mid stride

Grey and dull

After a period of wintery weather with ice starting to form on Maridalsvannet and snow on the ground we are now in that most depressing of early winter scenarios where it is warm, wet and as dark as dusk all day long. Combine that with some windy days and there may as well be no birds out there.

With a bit of work it is possible to find a bird or two and even some that are a bit interesting but I often wonder why I bother when it is like this.

In Maridalen it is occasionally quite birdy with lots of tits making themselves known but the next day you feel lucky to stumble upon a single Blue Tit. At least 2 Marsh Tits are still around and I have come across a couple of Long-tailed Tit flocks but all of them had white heads which again supports my feeling that flocks are still on the move. The Pygmy Owl has not been showing itself but Sparrowhawks have suddenly become obvious and one was targeting the Long-tailed Tits. A Three-toed Woodpecker was my first in a while but this is not a woodpecker winter so far.

At Fornebu the Bearded Tits seem to have moved on and the occasional squeal from a Water Rail is about the only life in the reedbeds. Today I found a Jack Snipe in the thermal though and wonder whether it was a bird that has stayed around despite the wintery conditions last week or perhaps it was a newly arrived bird. It was active when I first located it although quickly froze due to my presence and this suggests a newly arrived and hungry bird. It will be interesting to see how long it hangs around.

male Three-toed Woodpecker (tretåspett) in a very murky forest

a young male Sparrowhawk (spurvehauk)

Jack Snipe (kvartbekkasin) just after I discovered it when it was still standing up

it quickly lay down and froze though in response to me

and here is the sound of a very noisy Water Rail. I wondered if there were two due to the two very distinct calls that are given but they are never made simultaneously so I assume it is just one very agitated bird. One of the calls is often likened to a squealing pig but sounds also like a screaming kid.