And now for something completely different!

Since my last post there have of course been lots more Grosbeaks but I have not wanted to bore you with even more pictures of this species that still fascinates me. Thankfully though there have been other species that have attracted my attention and especially today when I went out with Halvard H on his boat around the islands of the inner Oslo fjord. It was unsurprisingly very cold but we managed four hours although there were disappointingly few birds to see. We had hoped to see both the male King Eider and adult Med Gull that were seen (from land) yesterday (both probably returning birds from last winter) but we failed in this respect. What we did see were fairly good numbers of Razorbills and Guillemots but few ducks with Velvet Scoters the commonest (but less than 50 in total) and a single Long-tailed Duck the rarest. Waders though were well represented with 22 Purple Sandpipers being the highest count EVER in Oslo and Akershus and a Jack Snipe a very unexpected find by a small pond on a small island.

After 4 hours on the boat I was very cold, stiff and tired but was persuaded to take Jr for our first downhill skiing outing of the winter. That I was able to see 16 drive by Grosbeaks on the way just made the day even better 😊 

Crested Tit (toppmeis) in Maridalen

pairs of Whooper and Mute Swans in Maridalen

Long-tailed Duck (havelle)

Purple Sandpipers (fjæreplytt)

Award winning!

In my last post I showed some of what I thought were my best pics of Piney but commented that I don’t know what it is that makes a particular picture popular. Well I seem to have cracked the code as the first picture in the post (and the one I was most satisfied with) has been chosen as Birdguides Photo of the Week!

We’ve had some pretty horrible weather recently which explains my lack of anything interesting to blog about but those Grosbeaks are still gorging on rowan berries and today we finally  had some really nice weather in the morning which despite the presence of the Beast allowed a new set of photos. I had a minimum of 50 birds so there are clearly still good numbers in the Oslo area but I do have a horrible feeling that they have become a seasonal food source for the local Sparrowhawks which could see their numbers go down.

playing with back-lighting

back lit and some hard work in PSE

Same same but different

A new batch of Piney photos some of which I reckon are pretty good 😂

Norwegian bird and nature Facebook groups are overflowing with pictures of Grosbeaks at the moment and many of them are of very high technical quality. I find it impossible to know which pictures are going to be popular though. As an example the picture which has got most likes (and has proved super popular in a number of different groups) is this one which I think would have ended up in my waste bin (just shows what I know!).

I have been waiting for a couple of weeks for them to use this bush in front of an old wooden building but the pictures wasn't as exciting as I had hoped for

Blue Tit (blåmeis) looks tiny

Guess what?

There is lots more action on the Pine Grosbeak front and although I keep thinking I have posted enough there is always something new to report or another pictures that is perhaps better than a previous one….

I have previously written how I was interviewed last Wednesday for the Norwegian Radio station P1. Well the next day the sister station P3 (a much younger target audience) had a rather long piece making fun of the previous days interview with the main theme being that birdwatchers must be hiding something and you can’t trust them. I challenged (on Facebook) Markus, the amusing but slightly mouthy presenter, to come out with me to find out what I was hiding. This caused some more amusement on the Friday morning show but Markus rose to the challenge (after some goading from his two co-presenters) and today he and a cameraman met me for some live radio (you might, like me, wonder why a camera is needed for radio but there was talk of putting a video out on the world wide intraweb but they have published this picture on Instagram). It all went very well and Markus proved to be slightly more interested in birds than his radio persona had let on. And, yes we saw Pine Grosbeaks 😊

Some more news on the Piney front is that Stig Mr Grosbeak Kalvatn found a ringed bird on Tuesday (which I then saw yesterday). With the help of good pictures the ring was seen to be Finnish with the code P389925. Stig duly reported it and got the answer that it is the furthest control for a Finnish ringed Grosbeak and had travelled 1080km after being ringed on 9 April this year. The bird would have been ringed before the breeding season so this does not tell us where this years invasion birds have originated from as it could well still have been migrating further north or east when ringed. I have previously seen a ringed Grosbeak in Oslo but my pictures that time did not allow any information to be gleaned. It is very rare that a photo allows a number to be read off these tiny metal rings (the large colour rings on gulls are something else) but the confiding nature of the Grosbeaks means they are close enough for high res pictures to be taken.

Markus and Daniel from NRK P3 Morgen with a flock of Pine Grosbeak in the rowan tree behind them

a new selfie with a Piney 

the ringed male Pine Grosbeak

and here I have managed to read off the code as being P389925 MEUM (?) ZOOL. FINLAND

the ringing data

And here are some picture of birds other than Pine Grosbeak. I do have a lot of new Grosbeak pictures which I reckon are better than I've taken before but I'll post those later.

Jay (nøtteskrike)

Waxwings (sidensvans), part of a flock of 100 birds

Whooper Swan (sangsvane) and Goldeneye (kvinand) on Maridalsvannet on a misty day

Whooper Swans did not breed successfully in Maridalen this year but this family party may have not travelled too far

Big dump of snow

Snow fell this weekend with a really solid dump on Monday morning although already by Tuesday it had turned to rain. The snow though gave some opportunities for new photos on the continued theme of variation on a theme. I tried yesterday to find over 100 Grosbeaks in Oslo but “only” managed 88 with a single group of 44 and today I found 70 without visiting half the areas I visited yesterday. I also added the species to the garden list with a flyover.

With the snow I had a real hope to get a picture of a Groz pulling off a rowan berry from a snow covered bunch of berries and then have snow drizzling down on it. Even though I saw that happen I did not manage to capture it digitally and due to there being fog the light was also so poor that the pictures I did get are of poor quality. Still, it gives me an excuse to keep on taking more shots!

I also noted and took pictures of some other species for a change 😉

Waxwing (sidensvans)

Dipper (fossekall) - this bird was singing

Willow Tit (granmeis)

Grosbeaks are turning up in the town now with these berry trees having held up to 19 birds for a few days now

this bird was right over a road (car passing beneath it)

dislodged snow but not the picture I had pictured in my mind

7 birds

a clump of snow did fall down but doesn't look that cool

by the metro

one bird landed on the ground and I played around with the exposure...

3 red males together

Two very differently coloured red (adult) males