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Monday, 22 April 2019

Easter birding is best

Easter birding is my absolute favourite. I get to wake up really early and have 4 hours or so in Maridalen before coming home for breakfast. Even if there aren’t too many birds to see it is still magical being up so early in the morning. This Easter has offered fantastic weather with sun, no wind and temperatures not falling below zero at night and then warming up to around 20C in the day. I have been at Maridalen every morning from Friday to Monday and also had a very early trip to Svellet on Sunday morning. Beast walking later in the day has taken us to Fornebu, Bygdøy and Maridalen so I have been very happy.

Highlight was not avian but finally getting to watch adders fighting/dancing and mating. This will have to be covered in a later dedicated post as I have so much digital footage to go through. Avian highlights were few and far between as the high pressure just wasn’t conducive to bringing any birds down but Maridalen always provides and a male Lapland Bunting, summer plumaged Slavonian Grebe, Black-throated Divers back on the lake, finding a (the) pair of Three-toed Woodpeckers again, a migrating Hen Harrier and my first Sand Martin, Osprey and Tree Pipit of the year were noteworthy.

The ice began melting in earnest on Sunday 21^st and disappeared during the course of Monday so went very quickly.

For other birders in the Oslo area the arrival of a Red-breasted Piece of Plastic at Fornebu created a lot of interest and given that Fornebu is now the clear hotspot for Red-breasted Geese in Norway (this is the third record this decade) and given that it ticked all the boxes for genuine wildness (tame bird, park surroundings and with feral Barnacle Geese) then it will undoubtedly be accepted as so….. Doesn’t quite spark my interest though.

Butterflies have been on the wing with Common Tortoiseshells, Comma, Orange Tip, Brimstone, Green-veined White noted. In the garden a wasp species was biting into buds on a pear tree and in Maridalen there were so many (Honey?) Bees on catkins that we could hear them buzzing.

I have far too many photos to go and might have to come back with an extra Easter posting once I've gone through them all but these are the ones that I've sorted so far.

the scene in Maridalen at 0740 on 22 April with the last bits of ice rapidly melting

Slavonina Grebe (horndykker). This species is more or less annual at the end of April ut usually only for a single day

Two and a half Tufted Ducks (toppand). The spring passage has just started

lots of Whooper Swan activity on 22.4 On the lake were an adult pair (not the breeding pair), an adult with two youngsters and three youngsters together (last years young?). The adult pair was also in the valley and had to later deal with the other pair which decided to visit the breeding site but who rapidly fled when the breeding pair came loudly aggressively towards them

Honey? Bee

Curlew (storspove) passage is peaking and a few have passed through Maridalen

first Sand Martin (sandsvale) of the year

male Lapland Bunting (lappspurv)

wasp species

Black-throated Diver (storlom)

Blue Tit (blåmeis)

Blåveis

Catkins (or are they actually called something else?)

Comma (hvit C) butterfly showing where its name (in both English and Norwegian) comes from

high up migrating Hen Harrier (myrhauk)

male Linnet (tornirisk) at Fornebu

a hiding Moorhen (sivhøne) also at Fornebu

male Three-toed Woodpecker (tretåspett) in Maridalen. I have loads more pictures to go through and will have a separate post later

Wood Pigeons (ringdue) often seem to have a leaky pupil

Two very different male Adders (hoggorm) "dancing" to decide who is strongest. Lots more to come on these which is undoubtedly one of the most amazing things I have experienced

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

Butterflies

Yesterday morning I successfully ignored the IKEA flat pack furniture that needed un-flatting and went up into Maridalen. With no wind and sun I had high hopes of seeing soaring raptors (and finally a Honey Buzzard) and butterflies. This year has been poor for both of these groups but a day like today should be as good as any for them.

Raptors were really hard work and apart from a single hunting Sparrowhawk I had to wait 5!! hours before I finally (and a long time after I had intended to return to the un-flatting) found some soaring raptors when I had a group of three Common Buzzards. These were followed by another Common Buzzard a little later but that was to be it. I have a feeling that something has happened with the larger raptors around Maridalen this year – hopefully it is just a bad breeding season rather than something more sinister.

I fared a better with butterflies. There were not large numbers except for the whites (which I still struggle with) but I ended up with quite a lot of variety although had no blues or hairstreaks. Here are the 15 species I saw:

Queen of Spain Fritillary (solvkåpe)

Silver Washed Fritillary (keiserkåpe)

Lesser Marbled Fritillary (engperlemorvinge)

Dark Green Fritillary (aglajaperlemorvinge)

Red Admiral (admiral)

Small Tortoisehell (neslesommerfugl)

Peacock (dagpåfuglsommerfugl)

Painted Lady (tistelsommerfugl)

Comma (Hvit C)

Ringlet (gullringvinge)

Scare Copper (oransjegullvinge)

Brimstone (sitronsommerfugl)

Green veined White (rapssommerfugl)

Large White (stor kålsommerfugl)

Small White (liten kålsommerfugl)

Queen of Spain Fritillaries seem to have established themselves in Maridalen after an individual I saw last year was the very first to be reported from Oslo in ArtsObservasjoner and I had up to 4 together including mating. I find that this species can vary a lot in size and also in colour on the upperwing and I spent lots of time trying to see the underwing of fritillary butterflies only to be “disappointed” to see the silver spots of this species. I do suspect though that I had at least one other species of fritillary (medium large) in addition to the ones I have recorded.

The copper butterflies were interesting. I was sure that I had seen a couple Small Coppers (ildgullvinge) but the pictures I took show (based on the underwing) that they were actually female Scarce Coppers (oransjegullvinge) of which I also saw the very distinctive males.

I tried my luck with dragonflies and damselflies and identified 3 species of dragonfly – Black Dater (svart høstlibelle), Four-spotted Chaser (firflekklibelle) and Brown Hawker (brun øyenstikker) - and one of damselfly - Common Blue Damselfly (stor blåvannymfe) although there were other species that I never managed to photograph of dragonfly that I didn’t manage to photo (ID in front of the computer is as far as I have come with these species groups). Black Darter remains by far the commonest species with thousands of them and I only saw a handful of large dragons.

What about the non-raptor birds though? On the lake there was an adult and two juvenile Arctic Terns one of which was begging for food. I had a couple of juv Red-backed Shrikes and 2 very fresh and presumably juvenile Marsh Warblers where a male had been singing in the late spring strongly suggesting successful local breeding. The Whooper Swan family is still going strong and I found the remains of the missing youngster although couldn’t make out how it had died. I also had a pair of Cranes and I reckon this species will attempt to nest in not too many years.

More signs of migration were my first returning Meadow Pipits.

I took a ridiculous numbers of photos. Here is jut a selection.

Birds: